The project INPATIENT focuses on the demonstration of an all-optical ANN accelerator. In particular, the objective is to study, design, implement and characterize a linear RNA accelerator by means of photonic integrated circuits, believing that the integrated photonic solution provides the highest bandwidth at moderate energy consumption among all available technologies.

In recent years, brain-inspired computers have emerged as a powerful tool for managing large data sets. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have enabled the resurgence of Artificial Intelligence in various fields: image analysis, natural language processing, autonomous driving and many others. The approach used so far has been to implement neural networks through graphics processing units, i.e. electronic hardware adapted to perform large matrix multiplication operations. These electronic solutions have achieved unprecedented heights in the last decade, but have now encountered a bottleneck in terms of energy consumption, both for calculations and for data movement. And it is in this area that the INPATIENT Project intends to provide its contribution to the development of research.

The Indian Institute of Technology of Patna and the CNR are partners of the Project.