Electro-Photonic Computing (EPiC) for On-Premise Applications

Sponsor: Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)

Abstract:

Researchers from Boston University College of Engineering, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and photonic-computing developer Lightmatter are collaborating to develop an Electro-Photonic Computing (EPiC) solution for Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), solving one of the biggest hurdles AVs face today – delivering high performance, low latency computing power that is also energy efficient.

The main objective of the project is to develop a complete end-to-end high performance DNN system for on-premise computing applications—mainly for a SWaP-constrained Autonomous Vehicle—using hybrid electro-photonic accelerators. We propose to design and prototype a complete electro-photonic computing (EPiC) system (CPUs + accelerators), integrate it with the sensors in AV and demonstrate its capability to perform perception, mapping, and planning while overcoming the power and performance limitations of CMOS-only computers. As our end goal, we plan to demonstrate a fully autonomous buggy that uses our EPiC system.

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