Project Polar- Energy efficient artificial intelligence using photonic processors

虽然人工智能和大数据的兴起通常被视为大数据挑战的答案，但它们也对环境提出了重大挑战。随着人工智能算法的规模和复杂性的增长，与训练这些算法和分析数据相关的能源消耗和环境成本正在以惊人的速度增长。例如，训练人工智能算法的平均成本高达284吨，是普通汽车排放量的五倍，自2012年以来，所需的计算时间和能源每3.4个月翻一番。在该项目中，ORCA将开发一个原型光子集成处理器系统，与当今市场上的人工智能加速器产品相比，该系统可以显着提高速度并节省效率。

While the rise of artificial intelligence and big data are often presented as the answer to the challenge of big data, they also present a significant challenge to the environment. As the size and complexity of AI algoritms grows, the energy consumption and environmental cost related to training those algorithms and analysing data is growing at an alarming rate. For example, the average cost of training an AI algorithm is as much as 284 tonnes, five times the emissions of an average car, and the amount of computing time and energy needed has doubled every 3.4 months since 2012\.ORCA computing are a brand new photonic computing company, spun out from the University of Oxford in November 2019\. In this project, ORCA will develop a prototype photonic integrated processor system that can enable significant speed up and efficiency savings over the AI accelerator products on the market today.