All-optical photonic approach to boost computational processing speed and energy efficiency
In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every year to reach 65 000 by 1975. When that remarkable prediction proved true, he revised the doubling rate to every two years, and that became known as Moore’s Law. Almost 50 years after Moore’s seminal prediction, traditional chip architectures are reaching their technological, practical and economical limits. The PoLLoC project is exploiting an all-optical approach that takes us beyond current transistor technology. By replacing electrons with photons, optical transistors and all-optical logic gates are envisaged that could bypass the fundamental limitations of the current electronic transistors. Moreover, these novel devices offer processing at the speed of light to achieve energy-efficient massive processing required for tomorrow’s high-efficiency and high-power computing platforms.
PoLLoC targets to build a radically new technology platform for polariton digital logic circuits able to operate at the quantum limit level.
Within PoLLoC we will validate this new technology with respect to the key parameters power, energy-efficiency, size, frequency, and cost. As quantitative performance targets to be achieved we aim for the following figures of merit:
• Optimized perovskite compounds with enhanced interaction strength
• Single digital logic gates with less than 100 attojoule switching energy
• High speed operation time on the sub-picosecond range
• Circuit with at least 3 digital gates

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/899141/reporting