盖茨押注硅光突破：旗下Neurophos首款光子芯片性能达英伟达AI超算十倍

Core Insights - Neurophos, an AI chip startup backed by the Gates Frontier Fund, has achieved a significant breakthrough in silicon photonics with its optical processing unit (OPU), which is approximately 10,000 times smaller than existing technologies and features a 1000×1000 pixel scale photonic computing matrix on a single chip [1][3] Group 1: Technology Advancements - The first optical accelerator, Tulkas T100, boasts AI computing performance that is ten times that of NVIDIA's latest Vera Rubin NVL72 supercomputer at FP4/INT4 precision, while maintaining similar power consumption levels [3] - Key technological advancements include a 1000×1000 photonic tile, significantly larger than the current GPU standard of 256×256, and a clock frequency of 56 GHz, which is much higher than the 9.1 GHz of Intel's Core i9-14900KF and 2.6 GHz of NVIDIA's RTX Pro 6000 GPU [3] Group 2: Production and Challenges - The CEO of Neurophos stated that traditional silicon photonic transistors are about 2 millimeters long, making high-density integration difficult, but their technology miniaturizes these transistors to a scale compatible with CMOS processes, enabling large-scale parallel optical computing [3] - Despite the advancements, the technology is still in the engineering validation stage, with mass production not expected before 2028, and several challenges remain, including on-chip SRAM capacity, vector processing unit expansion, and optoelectronic co-design [4]