As generative AI models grow more powerful, their energy use is becoming a serious bottleneck.
One promising approach for slashing energy consumption is the application of photonic computing, where processors use light instead of electricity.
Researchers from China have demonstrated an all-optical chip they call LightGen that is more than 100 times faster and more energy efficient than a leading Nvidia GPU on tasks like video and image generation.
The new optical chip is not ready yet to break out of the lab. Nonetheless, with further development, the work suggests that optical processors could be a fast, energy-efficient technology of an increasingly power-hungry AI industry.
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