Theoretical and numerical study of photonic devices and architectures for energy-efficient secure neuromorphic accelerators in LNOI platforms
Researchers
DOCTORAL CANDIDATE
Hans Kieninger
SUPERVISORS
Ass. Prof. Cédric Marchand
Dist. Prof. Arnan Mitchell
Dr. David Navarro
Research Areas
Photonics, applied physics, programming, security
Project Brief
The rising need to guarantee security at the edge has recently fostered a large amount of research and efforts into robust and lightweight hardware security approaches towards prompt integration in accelerators for edge computing and IoT. Differently from software security layers which are prone to various attacks targeting non-volatile digital memories storing secret information e.g., secret keys, hardware security layers and primitives such as physical unclonable functions can bypass this attack vector by generating secret information ad hoc once opportunely stimulated. Photonic technologies have a disruptive potential for neuromorphic computing as they can allow to process information at high speed with ultralow energy consumption and latency, while preserving similar fabrication costs to CMOS electronics.
The goal of the thesis concerns the theoretical and numerical investigation of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing and robust security layers. Various studies concerning different architectures and computing paradigms for neuromorphic computing as well as complex and chaotic architectures for security primitives such as physical unclonable functions and true random number generators are foreseen. For this type of architectures, several trade-offs are present e.g., when considering the required system complexity versus security strength of the proposed solutions. The possibility of using a high-performance platform featuring low losses (< 0.5dB/cm), high-speed modulators, and embedded photodiodes and electronics (> 50 GHz) will provide a perfect play field to explore exotic concepts and architectures for PICs from first principles. Finally, the proposed PICs will be realized at RMIT in a thin-film Lithium Niobate on Insulator (LNOI) platform, leveraging the expertise of the Integrated Photonics and Applications Centre (InPAC).