Parallel Matrix‐Vector Multiplication Using a Scalable Multiport Interferometer
Qingrui Yao, Yuxin Sun, Xiyuan Ke, Yiwei Xie, S. Liu, Hongzhi Xiong, Huan Li, Xiang Bai, Yaocheng Shi, Daoxin Dai · Laser & Photonics Review · 2025
ABSTRACT Integrated photonic matrix‐vector multiplication (MVM) is an emerging technology with broad applications in science and engineering, offering inherent advantages in high‐speed and low‐power consumption computations. Among various architectures explored, coherent multiport Mach‐Zehnder interferometer (MZI) mesh networks are widely utilized for implementing reconfigurable complex‐valued matrix computations. However, their scalability is fundamentally constrained by accumulated losses and control complexity as the mesh size grows. Here, we introduce multi‐wavelength technology to enhance computational parallelism by leveraging the broad bandwidth of MZIs, effectively adding an additional computational dimension to MZI mesh‐based MVM networks. The MZI switches are optimized for low phase error and wide bandwidth to alleviate the complexity of mesh programming and support a greater number of wavelengths. We experimentally demonstrate the mesh performing parallel MVM operations across multiple wavelengths through two applications: (1) multi‐channel analysis of clinical electrocardiogram (ECG) signals for cardiovascular risk prediction, achieving 93.8% accuracy in identifying sudden cardiac death risk; (2) parallel processing of segmented images enables edge extraction with significantly improved computational speed. This multi‐wavelength parallel MVM architecture overcomes key scalability limitations while offering a highly extensible pathway toward energy‐efficient, high‐throughput optical computing for advanced artificial neural applications.