Shen Yichen, founder of Shanghai-based optical computing firm Lightelligence, introduced the company's history during a briefing on Wednesday. [Photo by Shi Jing/chinadaily.com.cn]
Silicon photonic chips will account for more than 30 percent of chips in computing centers within five years, up from less than 3 percent at present, according to Shen Yichen, founder of Shanghai-based optical computing firm Lightelligence.
Shen made the remarks in an interview on Wednesday, highlighting that the company is jointly deploying a 10,000-GPU supernode computing cluster in Shanghai, which is the country’s first large-scale commercial application of the technology.
Founded in 2017 by Shen, the company’s core technology originated in his doctoral research — the first paper to demonstrate the application of silicon photonics to artificial intelligence computing, published on the cover of Nature Photonics in 2017.
The company shifted its center of operations from Boston to Shanghai in 2020, citing three reasons: a complete integrated circuit industry that can "close the loop within a five-kilometer radius", strong local manufacturing capabilities for high-volume production, and Shanghai’s willingness to be an early adopter of new technologies.
