Japanese media are paying attention to the Chinese start-up company that is developing optical computing chips. This could also change the landscape of international semiconductor development.
Chinese tech innovation enterprise Lightstandard raised a new round of funding in June. The investment was led by Dunhong Capital Management, with participation from the Pudong Science and Technology Angel Fund, the Suzhou Future Angel Industrial Fund, Zhongjiang Venture Capital, and other sovereign wealth funds. This is the first financing since Jinqiu Capital led the investment in December 2024, just half a year later.
Lightstandard was established in 2022. According to reports, it has commercialized the world's first integrated memory and computing technology using "optical chips" by combining silicon photonics and PCM (phase-change materials). Both founders are young people born after 1995, having graduated from the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Chicago in the US, respectively.
Since optical chips use optical signals instead of traditional electrical signals to process information, they offer significant advantages such as significantly improved communication speed, achieving broadband and saving power consumption.
Lightstandard chips have advantages such as miniaturization and low power consumption, making them suitable for large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) computing. Currently, a single chip can integrate large matrices of 128×128, 256×256 or more, with an integration density over ten times higher than conventional technologies.
In June 2024, the company completed the industry's first optical computing chip with computing density and accuracy reaching commercial levels. The matrix size was 128×128, breaking through the 64×64 limit that had been considered the industry ceiling for three years. Currently, the packaging and testing of the first-generation computing board using 256×256 chips and optoelectronic fusion technology are underway, and the design of 512×512 chips is also in progress. In the future, products based on this chip are expected to surpass the world's most advanced electric chips.
2025 will be a milestone year for the full commercialization of Lightstandard technology. In December 2024, it signed a strategic alliance with a Chinese IT giant, agreeing to closely cooperate in the field of AI computing hardware.
According to the founder, since its establishment, the company has focused on providing next-generation computing chips and systems, targeting fields with high demands for computing power such as AI models and embodied AI. In the future, the company plans to develop products with high computing power and energy efficiency in various forms, focusing on its own developed optical chips that can perform computing in memory.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1841303450932236/
Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.