Design and characterisation of an optoelectronic neural chip

We present a prototype integrated circuit design suitable for use as a neural backplane in an optoelectronic artificial neural network. The device consists of a 4 × 4 array of optical input, electronic output processing elements. The processing elements can sample the temporally multiplexed grey scale generated by a binary mode ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial light modulator. They implement the post-synaptic summing, have a programmable thresholding function, and can respond to both positive and negative activations - a requirement of many artificial neural netork models.