Zeus

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to revolutionise modern life, by enabling autonomous vehicles, real time medical diagnosis, financial modelling, power grid management, etc.However, the growth in the compute power necessary to develop future AI systems will run up against a data transmission bottle neck in compute power. This bottleneck is caused by delays in electrical signal transmission. One solution is to use light to send signals, rather than the electricity. Photonic chips will lead to higher performance because light produces less heat than electricity, and crucially travel faster. Many companies are looking to develop these chips.In order to create such a photonic chip, many channels of data are needed to be running simultaneously. And each channel needs ~50mW of optical power. The current cutting-edge lasers can only just meet this specification. Which means for each channel there must be a single laser, and each laser is large, power consuming, and integration is challenging. Vector is developing high end lasers using highly innovative photonic crystal design expertise and sees an opportunity to extend this work to enable world-leading photonic chip performance. Vectors photonic crystal technology is capable of delivering a laser with significantly higher optical power (up to 1W), enabling a single laser to drive multiple channels.This results in a system with significantly reduced energy consumption, a much lower component count, a much simpler system architecture and reduced cost. A system where you have "multiple channels per laser" rather than "multiple lasers per channel". This project will develop a 1W laser capable of supporting 20 channels on a photonics chip -- an ambitious objective which if achieved could revolutionise the field.The photonics crystal surface emitting laser (PCSEL) is a paradigm shift in laser functionality and breaks the performance vs cost trade-off present in current semiconductor lasers. PCSELs for datacentre optical interconnects are smaller, cheaper, more efficient and easier to integrate into systems than current solutions.Vector photonics will enable system integrators to differentiate themselves against people who use legacy technologies and better meet the needs of their customers.