Extending the multi-plane light conversion (MPLC) technique, we propose and demonstrate a 3D micro-optic system capable of performing matrix/tensor multiplications. Our proposed approach, called multi-plane light processing (MPLP), is passive and utilizes all degrees of freedom of light which makes it well-suited to surpass electronic accelerators in both scalability and energy efficiency. MPLP is an all-in-one system capable of spatial mode conversion and multiplexing, wavelength demultiplexing, hybrid coupling, and optical routing. As a result, the proposed device can perform matrix/tensor multiplications in a single clock cycle with tens of GHz speed limited by the optical modulators and photodetectors’ bandwidth. We have experimentally demonstrated proof-of-concept MPLP utilizing a spatial mode modulator performing 2×2 matrix-matrix multiplication and discuss the scaling methods to enhance its computation power. We envision the proposed PTA competing with electronic accelerators for large-scale and power-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
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