Iterative eigensolver using fixed-point photonic primitive.

Photonic computing has potential advantages in speed and energy consumption yet is subject to inaccuracy due to the limited equivalent bitwidth of the analog signal. In this Letter, we demonstrate a configurable, fixed-point coherent photonic iterative solver for numerical eigenvalue problems using shifted inverse iteration. The photonic primitive can accommodate arbitrarily sized sparse matrix-vector multiplication and is deployed to solve eigenmodes in a photonic waveguide structure. The photonic iterative eigensolver does not accumulate errors from each iteration, providing a path toward implementing scientific computing applications on photonic primitives.

Accelerated fixed-point iterative reconstruction for fiber borescope imaging.

Computational imaging systems with embedded processing have potential advantages in power consumption, computing speed, and cost. However, common processors in embedded vision systems have limited computing capacity and low level of parallelism. The widely used iterative algorithms for image reconstruction rely on floating-point processors to ensure calculation precision, which require more computing resources than fixed-point processors. Here we present a regularized Landweber fixed-point iterative solver for image reconstruction, implemented on a field programmable gated array (FPGA). Compared with floating-point embedded uniprocessors, iterative solvers implemented on the fixed-point FPGA gain 1 to 2 orders of magnitude acceleration, while achieving the same reconstruction accuracy in comparable number of effective iterations. Specifically, we have demonstrated the proposed fixed-point iterative solver in fiber borescope image reconstruction, successfully correcting the artifacts introduced by the lenses and fiber bundle.