Silicon microdisk-based full adders for optical computing.

Abstract

Due to the projected saturation of Moore's law, as well as the drastically increasing trend of bandwidth with lower power consumption, silicon photonics has emerged as one of the most promising alternatives that has attracted a lasting interest due to the accessibility and maturity of ultra-compact passive and active integrated photonic components. In this Letter, we demonstrate a ripple-carry electro-optic 2-bit full adder using microdisks, which replaces the core part of an electrical full adder by optical counterparts and uses light to carry signals from one bit to the next with high bandwidth and low power consumption per bit. All control signals of the operands are applied simultaneously within each clock cycle. Thus, the severe latency issue that accumulates as the size of the full adder increases can be circumvented, allowing for an improvement in computing speed and a reduction in power consumption. This approach paves the way for future high-speed optical computing systems in the post-Moore's law era.