AI chip smaller than a grain of salt uses light to decode data

An artificial intelligence chip smaller than a grain of salt can perch at the end of an optical fibre, harnessing the physics of light to process the information passed through the fibre – while using far less energy and computational power than typical AI techniques.

Optical fibres can carry data at the speed of light, but decoding these light signals usually happens on a slower and more energy-intensive external computing device. The new AI chip could perform that data-processing task…