Accelerating AI through Photonic Computing and Communication

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 | 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET
MIT Building 36, Room 4462, Allen Room
Speaker: Darius Bunandar, Lightmatter

Attend this hybrid Microsystems Technology Laboratories Seminar in person on the MIT campus, or via zoom here.

Abstract: Lightmatter is combining electronics, photonics, and new algorithms to create the next-gen compute platform. In this talk, I will introduce two of our technologies: Passage and Envise. Passage is a wafer-scale programmable photonic interconnect that uses silicon waveguides to enable chips to communicate with unprecedented bandwidth. Envise is the world’s first major photonic processor for accelerating ML.

Speaker Bio: Darius Bunandar is a Co-Founder of Lightmatter. As Chief Scientist, Darius coordinates the company’s R&D in new architectures and new algorithms. Prior to Lightmatter, Darius obtained his PhD in physics at MIT studying quantum computation and communication using compact nanophotonic circuits. He has developed software to visualize the effect of binary black holes on light with the SXS Caltech-Cornell collaboration. He briefly worked as a Mechanical Engineer—performing large-scale blast experiments and simulating explosions at BakerRisk in Texas. He previously earned his BS degrees in both Physics and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.