100-lane expressway for light: China's optical chip hits record speeds

Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) have developed an ultra-high-parallel optical computing chip capable of a theoretical 2,560 tera-operations per second (TOPS) at a 50 GHz optical clock rate. Unlike conventional optical processors that use a single wavelength of light, this chip employs a 100-wavelength architecture, effectively creating a "100-lane expressway" for data transmission. This is achieved through soliton microcomb sources that split a continuous laser into over a hundred distinct spectral channels, allowing massive parallelism without increasing clock speed or chip size. The chip offers low insertion loss, wide optical bandwidth, and fully reconfigurable routing, making it suitable for applications such as image recognition, real-time signal processing, and artificial intelligence (AI). The design's high parallelism and energy efficiency position it as a promising alternative to traditional GPUs, particularly for AI workloads that require numerous identical operations. Its low latency and power efficiency also make it attractive