Abstract
The existing Von Neumann architecture places limits to data processing in AI, a booming technology. To address this issue, research is being conducted on computing architectures and artificial neural networks that simulate neurons and synapses, which are the hardware of the human brain. With high-speed, high-throughput data communication infrastructures, photonic solutions today are a mature industrial reality. In particular, due to the recent outstanding achievements of artificial neural networks, there is considerable interest in improving their speed and energy efficiency by exploiting photonic-based neuromorphic hardware instead of electronic-based hardware. This paper covers recent photonic neuromorphic studies and a classification of existing solutions (categorized into multilayer perceptrons, convolutional neural networks, spiking neural networks, and reservoir computing).