Researchers from City, University of London’s School of Science and Technology have developed an innovative algorithm called FatNet, which leverages the high-resolution capabilities of optical accelerators in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. FatNet is based on the technique called convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to process and classify images, and is significantly faster than traditional CPU/GPU based AI. The algorithm is specifically designed for deep learning, a subset of machine learning that mimics the human brain, and is designed to maximize the parallelism potential of optics.