CN
Photon clock chip breakthrough: time regulation speed increases by 100 times, opening a new era of intelligent computing
The chip's information processing requires precise control of time, and its speed and accuracy directly determine the chip's performance. The Chang Lin research team of Peking University, in conjunction with the Institute of Aerospace Information Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully developed the world's first photon clock chip, increasing the on-chip time regulation speed by 100 times, bringing revolutionary performance improvements to intelligent computing, 6G communication, aerospace remote sensing and other fields. Related results have been published in "Natural Electronics".
Limitations of traditional chips: The bottleneck of electronic clocks
"Traditional chips rely on electronic oscillators to generate clock signals, but their speed is limited and their power consumption is extremely high, so the heating problem is serious." Researcher Chang Lin pointed out, "More importantly, a single chip can only cover a specific frequency range, resulting in the need of customized chips in different scenarios such as 6G communications, vehicle-mounted radars, and GPUs, and the cost increases dramatically."
Photonic chip technology breakthrough: using light as medium, speed jump
Technical Principles:
Advantages of light speed: The photon clock uses the speed of light to transmit signals, and its speed is far beyond that of the electronic clock;
Optical frequency comb transformation: The team chips the traditional "optical frequency comb" equipment that relies on imported and sold for millions of yuan, and builds a ring microcavity structure on the chip, so that the optical signal can circulate at the speed of light, and each lap takes only one billionth of a second to achieve the ultra-high speed time reference.
Structural innovation:
The annular microcavity is similar to a "runway" in which light circulates to form a stable periodic signal;
Single chips cover the full microwave frequency band clock (5G to 6G and above), breaking the industry practice of replacing equipment with communication hardware upgrades.
Performance Leap: Complete Upgrade from Communication to Computing
Communication field:
A single chip supports the full frequency band of 5G/6G, and in the future, mobile phone communications do not need to be upgraded and replaced by standard upgrades;
Computing Fields:
The clock frequency exceeds 100GHz, which is dozens of times the current CPU/GPU main frequency (2-3GHz);
The computing power of artificial intelligence has been significantly improved, and the number of calculations per unit time has increased significantly.
Technology Outlook: The Future of Optoelectronic Fusion
Chang Lin revealed: "Phonic clock chips provide core time-frequency synchronization solutions for photoelectric integrated systems, which can further reduce power consumption in the future and promote technological innovation in high-precision demand scenarios such as aerospace remote sensing and autonomous driving."
Source: Guangming Daily (Reporter: Jin Haotian), School of Electronics, Peking University
Technical highlights marked:
Speed breakthrough: time regulation speed increases by 100 times
Frequency band coverage: Single chip compatible with 5G/6G full band
Computing power improvement: The clock frequency exceeds 100GHz, far exceeding the existing CPU/GPU
Cost optimization: breaking import dependence and promoting large-scale application
Attachment: Schematic diagram of time-frequency synchronization strategy of optoelectronic systems
Photon generation → 2. Annular microcavity cycle → 3. Clock signal output → 4. Synchronous regulation across frequency bands
