Dalian, China – In typical scenarios such as aerospace, unmanned systems, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent driving, aerial image analysis, electro-optical pod detection and industrial quality inspection, equipment must accurately capture weak, small targets in complex backgrounds with strong interference and low signal-to-noise ratios, extract fine features, and efficiently complete massive matrix operations and real-time intelligent judgment tasks. For a long time, the conventional chip market has been dominated by electronic chips, but as their physical performance approaches the limit, they generally face pain points including high power consumption, large latency and cooling difficulties, becoming a major shortfall restricting the iterative upgrade of high-end equipment intelligence. The emergence of photonic chips, however, is expected to deftly bypass the physical limits of electronic chips, break through system computing power bottlenecks, and enable China to achieve a “lane-change overtaking” in the chip field.
Recently, a research team led by Zeru Liu, CEO of Xiamen Guangzhi Xinwei Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on edge-side image recognition, independently designed and developed a new-generation photonic chip, realizing domestic substitution of the core processing unit. The team members are mainly master’s and doctoral students from Dalian University of Technology. This chip breaks through the physical limitations of conventional electronic chips in power consumption, heat dissipation and interference resistance, with distinct advantages of low power consumption, high stability and high precision. Preliminary test results show that the chip module can reduce total system cost by about 20–30 percent, cut power consumption and heat dissipation by more than 70 percent, and improve system stability by 25 percent.
Team members conduct performance testing on a photonic chip. Photo courtesy of the Guangzhi Xinwei team.
“Edge-side image recognition has long relied on traditional electronic chips, which often struggle to balance real-time performance with low power consumption when processing high-throughput image tasks,” Liu said. “The modulation material has to minimize optical loss while achieving a sufficiently large tuning range. As chip arrays become denser, crosstalk among optical, thermal and electrical signals gets harder to control. And as the material phase states corresponding to optical weights become increasingly refined, the requirements for stability and precision grow more stringent.”
Under the guidance of Professor Tun Cao at Dalian University of Technology, Liu led the team to tackle the three major technical challenges through coordinated innovation at the material, structural and control levels: through doping modification, they improved optical signal transmission quality, balancing low loss with a large modulation amplitude; on the structural side, a stacked photonic-thermal-electrical design confines heat diffusion and reduces crosstalk in high-density arrays; on the control side, they established a multi-stable phase-state programming method, moving optical weights from “tunable” further toward “multi-level, precise and stably tunable.” After multiple rounds of simulation iteration, prototype fabrication and experimental verification, the team has completed full-process experimental validation from devices to systems, laying the groundwork for subsequent engineering applications.
Currently, the team has established Xiamen Guangzhi Xinwei Technology Co., Ltd., deeply cultivating the domestic track for high-end sensor chips and supplying core devices and supporting products to domestic high-end sensor chip manufacturers. Liu said the team will push the chip technology from laboratory prototype form toward industrialization and large-scale application, accelerating integration with various application scenarios such as high-end equipment and industrial inspection, so that domestic photonic chips can fully land on the front line of edge intelligence applications.
Team members with the first photonic chip developed by the team. Photo courtesy of the Guangzhi Xinwei team.
Media ContactCompany Name: Xiamen Guangzhi Xinwei Technology Co., Ltd.Contact Person: Zeru LiuEmail: Send EmailCity: DalianCountry: ChinaWebsite: https://www.dlut.edu.cn
