Researchers at UCLA have taken a trained DL neural network and implemented it into a series of passive optical only, 3D printed diffraction gratings to perform fashion MNIST object classification. And did the same with a MNIST handwritten digit and ImageNet DL neural network classifiers.
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See the article on SlashGear, 3D printed all-optical diffractive deep learning neural network…. The research article is only available on Optical Society of America’s website/magazine (see Residual D2NN: training diffractive deep neural networks via learnable light shortcuts behind hard paywall). However, I did find a follow on article on ArchivX (see Analysis of Diffractive Optical Neural Networks and Their Integration with Electronic Neural Networks) that discussed how to integrate D2NN approaches with an electronic NN to create a hybrid inference engine. And another earlier Science article (see All-optical machine learning using diffractive deep neural networks) that was available which described earlier versions of D2NN technology for MNIST digit classification, fashion MNIST classification and ImageNet object classification.
How does it work
Apparently the researchers trained a normal (electronic based) deep learning neural network on the MNIST, Fashion MNIST and ImageNet and then converted the resultant trained NNs into a set of multiple diffraction grids. They did some computer simulation of the D2NN and once satisfied it worked and achieved decent accuracy, 3D printed the diffraction plates.
In their D2NN, they start with coherent (laser) light in the THz spectrum, used this to illuminate the input plane (I assume an image of the object/digit/fashion accessory) and passed this through multiple plates of diffraction grids onto THz detector which was used to detect the illuminated spot that indicated the classification.
The article in science has a supplementary materials download that show how the researchers converted NN weights into a diffraction grating. Essentially each pixel on the diffraction grating either transmits, refracts, or reflects a light path. And this represents the connections between layers. It’s unclear whether the 5 or 6 plates used in the D2NN correspond to the NN layers but it’s certainly possible.
And to the life of me I can’t understand what they mean by “Residual D2NN”, other than if it means using a trained (residual) NN and converting this to D2NN.
Some advantages of D2NN
3D printing diffraction gratings means anyone/lab could do this. The 3D printers they used had a spatial accuracy of 600 dpi, with 0.1mm accuracy, almost consumer grade 3D printers. In any case, being able to print these in a matter of hours, while not as easy as changing an all digital NN, seems like an easy way to try out the approach.
For example, for the MNIST digit classifier they used a pixel size of 400um and each diffraction layer they created was equivalent to 200X200 neural weights. Which means that 5 layer D2NN could handle about 0.2M neural weights which were completely connected to one another. This meant they could have (200×200)**2*5=8B connections in the MNIST D2NN. In the image classifier, each diffraction layer had 300×300 neural weights. So D2NN’s seem to scale very well.
Being an all passive optical device, the system is operates entirely in parallel, That is, the researchers indicated that the D2NN devices operate at the speed of light and would perform the inferencing activity in the time it takes a camera to capture the image.
Also the device uses very little energy (I assume just the energy for the THz generator, the input plane detector and the THz detector at the end.
And the researchers also claimed the device was cheap to manufacture, it could be created for less than $50. (Unclear if this included all the electronics or just the D2NN diffraction gratings and holder). And once you have locked into a D2NN that you wanted to use, could be manufactured in volume, very cheaply (sort of like stamping out CD platters). Finally, the number of neural network nodes and layers can be scaled up to a large number of layers and nodes per layer while still fitting on the diffraction gratings. In contrast, all electronic NN require more compute power as you scale up network layers and nodes per layer.
The other article (ArchivX) talked about potentially using a hybrid optical-electronic DNN approach with some layers being D2NN and others being purely digital (electronics). Such a system could potentially be used where some portion of the NN was more stable/more compute intensive than others and where the final output classification layer(s) was more changeable and much smaller/less compute intensive. Such a hybrid system could make use of the best of of the all optical D2NN to efficiently and quickly compress the input space and then have the electronic final classification layer provide the final classification step.
The Oracle
Combining a handful of D2NNs into a device that accepts speech input and provides speech output with the addition of say an offline copy of Wikipedia, Google Books etc. with a search engine that could be used to retrieve responses to questions asked would create an oracle device. Where you would ask a question and the device would respond with the best answer it could find (in it’s databases).
If this could be made out of an all passive optical components and use natural sunlight/electronic illumination to perform it’s functionality, such an all optical, question to answer oracle would be very useful to the populations of the world. And could be manufactured in volume very cheaply and would cost almost nothing to operate.
A couple of other tweaks, if we could collapse the multiple grating D2NNs into a single multi-layer plate/platter and make these replaceable in the device that would allow the oracle’s information base to be updated periodically.
Then if we could embed such a device into a Long Now Clock that would reflect sunlight onto the disk every Solstice, or Equinox, then we could have a quarterly oracle device that could last for 1000 of years. That would provide answers to queries one day every quarter. And that would be quite the oracle…
Photo credit(s):
- From ArchivX article, Analysis of Diffractive Optical Neural Networks and Their Integration with Electronic Neural Networks
- From Science article, All-optical machine learning using diffractive deep neural network
- From OSA article, Residual D2NN: training diffractive deep neural networks via learnable light shortcuts
