Photonic Binary Convolutional Neural Network Based on Microring Resonator Array

We propose the photonic architecture based on microring resonator (MRR) arrays for binary convolutional neural networks (BCNNs) accelerated computing. The MRR crossbar unit is used for computing weight {-1, 1} and the single MRR is for input {0, 1}. The computing parallelism is improved through wavelength division multiplexing. The photonic BCNN achieves 97.29% classification accuracy on the MNIST test set which is only 1.94% lower than the accuracy of the 32-bit neural network, and saves 32× at memory usage. We analyze effects of input and weight encoding errors on the photonic BCNN. When the input or weight error rate is less than 0.01%, the test accuracy remains unchanged. We evaluate the performance of the photonic BCNN architecture considering optical loss, inter-channel crosstalk, operation frequency and device power consumption. The energy efficiency of the designed photonic BCNN architecture is 1.72 pJ/MAC, which is 4.80× and 61.32× better than the 8-bit and 16-bit architecture respectively. The photonic BCNN is promising to be used for edge computing.