Scientists in China have unveiled a new AI chip called LightGen that is 100 times faster and 100 times more energy efficient than NVIDIA chips, the leading supplier of AI chips worldwide. Instead of using electricity to move information, this new optical chip relies on light to perform complex generative tasks.

Photons of light are already known to be much better than electrons for advanced computer chips because they are faster, consume less power, and produce much less heat. Even so, current photonic chips cannot keep up with the massive demands of AI. So, researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University developed a new kind of fully optical chip with over two million photonic neurons