TOPS‐Speed Reconfigurable Photonic Transposed Convolution Accelerator for Generative Tasks

ABSTRACT Transposed convolution, crucial in large‐parameter generative models ranging from content creation to autonomous driving, imposes substantial demands on GPU memory and energy consumption in electronic processors. Electronic processors, fundamentally limited by the von Neumann architecture and further hindered by silicon‐based quantum tunneling effects, struggle to meet the stringent real‐time requirements of modern generative workloads. In contrast, optical computing—exploiting ultra‐wide bandwidth and ultra‐low power consumption—offers a promising alternative for high‐speed transposed convolution in next‐generation AI. Here, we introduce a high‐speed and reconfigurable photonic transposed convolution accelerator (PTCA). By interleaving wavelength, temporal, and spatial dimensions and leveraging an integrated Kerr microcomb for data‐dimension expansion, the PTCA achieves tera operations per second (TOPS) with 100% bit efficiency. Experiments demonstrate a processing speed of 1.026 TOPS, making it, to the best of our knowledge, the fastest reconfigurable PTCA to date. In Fashion‐MNIST reconstruction tasks, this system achieves a mean squared error (MSE) of 0.0062 without any additional post‐processing by electronic fully connected layers. Our work thus establishes a high‐speed, reconfigurable photonic paradigm for accelerating future generative AI.