Highly scalable machine vision enabled with meta-optics-based ultra-wide neural network
摘要
Optical neural networks (ONNs) offer a route to low-latency, energy-efficient AI, but scaling them to modern model sizes is constrained by two practical bottlenecks: training large ONNs is computationally prohibitive, and implementing or tuning millions of optical components is highly sensitive to fabrication imperfections and alignment errors. Here we report a metasurface-based optical learning machine that bypasses these barriers by operating in an ultra-wide regime. We use an optical metasurface with 41 million optical parameters to form an ultra-wide NN, and show that, at this scale, a fixed, untrained metasurface can closely approximate a fully trained one. Residual mismatch is compensated by a compact digital backend with only