Photonic-Electronic SmartNIC With Fast and Energy-Efficient Photonic Computing Cores (MIT)


A technical paper titled “Lightning: A Reconfigurable Photonic-Electronic SmartNIC for Fast and Energy-Efficient Inference” was published by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Abstract: "The massive growth of machine learning-based applications and the end of Moore's law have created a pressing need to redesign computing platforms. We propose Lightning, the first ... » read more

The Rise Of SmartNICs


Network interface cards (NICs) have been on the market since shortly after the first PCs in the mid-1980s. However, over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of SmartNICs. What is a SmartNIC? The most basic definition of a SmartNIC is simply a programmable NIC. Others have overloaded the concept by heaping vast amounts of silicon and firmware into their implementations. A good work... » read more