Accelerating the development of secure and reliable photonic and electronic systems

Simulation frameworks are indispensable in modern hardware and computing systems development, enabling researchers to evaluate and optimize complex architectures before physical implementation. These tools facilitate detailed modeling of hardware
components, interactions, and performance under various workloads – a broad exploration of the hardware and the software design space. For emerging technologies like photonic accelerators, which promise significant speed and energy efficiency
improvements, simulation offers a controlled environment to analyze designs and refine them for real-world applications before expensive physical design takes place. Photonic neural networks (PNNs) are particularly well-suited for simulation-based
research. As these systems integrate novel photonic devices with conventional electronic components like CPUs and memory systems, their design presents unique challenges. Simulations can bridge this gap, enabling the exploration of trade-offs between speed, energy efficiency, reliability, and security in edge computing and other scenarios. Frameworks like gem5, a microarchitecture-level simulator, support such investigations by providing modular environments for configuring and testing system architectures.