摘要: The incorporation of high-performance optoelectronic devices into photonic
neuromorphic processors can substantially accelerate computationally intensive
operations in machine learning (ML) algorithms. However, the conventional
device design wisdom is disconnected with system optimization. We report a
device-system co-design methodology to optimize a free-space optical general
matrix multiplication (GEMM) hardware accelerator by engineering a spatially
reconfigurable array made from chalcogenide phase change materials. With a
highly-parallelized hardware emulator constructed based on experimental
information, we demonstrate the design of unit device by optimizing GEMM
calculation accuracy via reinforcement learning, including deep Q-learning
neural network, Bayesian optimization, and their cascaded approach, which show
a clear correlation between system performance metrics and physical device
specifications. Furthermore, we employ physics-aware training approaches to
deploy optimized hardware to the tasks of image classification, materials
discovery, and a closed-loop design of optical ML accelerators. The
demonstrated framework offers insights into the co-design of optoelectronic
devices and systems with reduced human-supervision and domain-knowledge
barriers.