Jekyll2021-10-27T11:46:29+00:00phe.tue.nl/feed.xmlPhEPhotonics Society Eindhoven{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}Crypto currency mining using integrated photonics2021-09-22T00:00:00+00:002021-09-22T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/InterviewBogdan<style>
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<h3 style="margin-top: 13px; font-size: 13px"><i> Written by F. Ece Demirer. Photo credit F. Lemaitre</i></h3>
<h3 style="margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px"><i>How photonics can help with the high energy consumption of the crypto currency mining activities</i></h3>
<p>Even though it is hard to reason with Elon Musk sometimes, this time he is right on the point! We need to address the high energy consumption problem of crypto currencies. As a group of photonics enthusiasts from Photonics Society Eindhoven, we reached out to experts who are trying to solve the energy consumption problem through using integrated photonics approaches for crypto currency mining. Dr Bogdan Penkovsky, who is the co-founder of the non-profit organization PoWx, accepted our request for an interview. The discussion revolved around crypto currency mining and how hybrid photonic-electronic computation can help to do this ’cheaper’. We are excited to see that the hot topic of crypto currency mining is attracting attention towards photonics solutions. With numerous eyeballs watching the topic, we believe this is a great opportunity to increase the role of photonics in our daily life’s. Not to mention that it can be as valuable as mining gold, literally.</p>
<p>To bring everyone on the same page we briefly address why using crypto currencies consume energy at the first place and what does photonics have to do with that. I assume that by now we all heard about the term crypto currency. Probably, none of our readers are experts on this topic; that’s why we tried to do our best to give simple descriptions of some concepts. It is important note that in this article, we don’t dive into discussions of (i) whether we need crypto currencies and decentralized banking systems, nor (ii) if the actions of centralized banks such as printing money etc. is as bad as it sounds. We simply recognize that the crypto currency use is increasing, and institutions are starting to adopt it.</p>
<p>Starting with the question: “If crypto currency is a technological product, what do they deliver to consumers?” Banks deliver multiple services among them one role is to enable trustable money transactions by preventing misconduct, double spending and stealing. Crypto currencies replace this role by using a technology called block chain, which delivers the same functionality of a central body, without the central body itself. In this technology, the system assumes nobody is trustable. For example, one such block chain system requires that a transaction should be approved and recorded by the majority of the participants before it can take place. As a result, multiple computations take place in different parts of the world and if the answer is the same, the transaction is allowed. This justification process is called proof-of-work (PoW), and it is at the base of the majority of the crypto mining activities. The miners are awarded when they help a transaction to occur, thus when they compute. An alternative to PoW is proof-of-stake (PoS), which is suggested to decrease the energy consumptions associated with PoW activities. In this article we focused solely on the PoW. Among them, there is a large number of algorithms suggested to decrease the energy consumption without sacrificing the security of the whole system. So far, even the most efficient ones are consuming significant amounts of energy. When it comes to heating the planet to provide such a service, we need to ask ourselves: “Is there a cheaper way of doing the same thing?”’ And ‘cheaper’ in this case refers to ways that will not cost us our planet.</p>
<p>Let us dive into the root of the problem. The electronic circuitries realizing the mentioned computations are responsible for the high energy consumption. More specifically, their need for constantly being fed by electrons and more importantly the need for cooling. The latter contributes to the highest portion of the energy consumption. It is suggested that when photonic components are integrated into electronic circuitry, the computations are realized at a much lower energy cost. To simplify their claim, one can say that the advantage of the photonic components is thanks to the very nature of photons being different than electrons.
Now let us listen to our guest Bogdan and what he has to say about this technology. Last but not the least we heard the gossips that that they are looking for a partner to launch a complete photonic miner demo!</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Interview:</h3>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">Can you tell our audience briefly what is a proof of work or proof of stake in the framework of crypto currency/block-chain transactions and crypto currency mining?</h3>
<p>Proof of work is an algorithm that solves a particular problem: how to avoid double spending transactions in a decentralized ledger where no one trusts anyone. This algorithm is associated with a vast amount of computation performed during mining (writing transactions into blocks). The double-spending is prevented essentially because in a healthy network it is more profitable to behave as an honest actor. To better understand the jargon, please check the <a href="https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/glossary.asciidoc">glossary</a>. You may also want to check out <a href="https://sciencex.com/news/2020-05-powering-bitcoin-silicon-photonics-power.html">this introductory post</a> from the Mastering Bitcoin book.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">In your paper you describe how high is the energy consumption of the current proof of work (done by electronic chips). How photonics can help in this regard?</h3>
<p>From our perspective, the ideal proof of work algorithm would be an algorithm that spends no energy, but time (i.e. pure delay). This kind of proof of work is hardly possible in the real world. So instead, we would love to see some sort of a “computational delay” when only a small fraction of energy is spent on proof-of-work computation, while this computation itself introduces a time-delay. We believe that photonics can help us to achieve such a “computational delay”. The mentioned paper can be found <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.05193.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">What are the physical principles behind the optical proof of work in your suggested devices. Are optical components able to perform the full computation of proof of work or do you use a hybrid system with electronics?</h3>
<p>Our algorithm, Heavy Hash, consists of three stages: two SHA3 hashes and a matrix-vector multiplication in-between.</p>
<p>The photonic prototype we have is based on a mesh of Mach-Zehnder interferometers that optically performs matrix-vector multiplication. The other part of Heavy Hash, SHA3 blocks are computed digitally. Therefore, we have a hybrid system where most of the computational work has to be performed by the optical part (otherwise the energy reduction would be not significant).</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">How did you come up with this idea of optical proof of work, what are the previous works on the field that contributed to this? During your video lecture you mention neuromorphic computing and artificial intelligence studies helping you with your design, can you tell us about it?</h3>
<p>Back in 2018 we have identified a huge need in lowering the energy use of Bitcoin. On the other hand there were multiple works on photonic computing such as by Paul Prucnal’s team, Marin Soljačić group and others. And me myself I did a PhD at FEMTO-ST in Laurent Larger’s group that worked on photonic reservoir computing. Later I met Mike Dubrovsky and we both thought that it was interesting to apply optical computers into alternative, non-AI use (i.e. for low-power proof-of-work mining).</p>
<p>We believe that proof-of-work is actually a simpler use case for optical accelerators (compared to AI) as you don’t need a huge capacity device to perform some useful computation. On the other hand, to be competitive in the field of machine learning, one needs to compute billions of multiply-accumulate operations per second. As an illustration, state of the art models in natural language processing tend to go up to hundred billions of parameters (e.g. GPT3). The same is true about computer vision and other machine learning fields.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">Looking at the end result of your work, one can say that this combines multiple disciplines such as electronics engineering, computer science and physics. We, as Photonic Society Eindhoven, are mainly focused on electrical engineering and applied physics. Can you tell us about the computer science terms such as the hash rate, you refer to it very often, what does that simply mean?</h3>
<p>The hash rate is simply the number of hashes that can be verified per second. This term is useful, for example, to compare two mining devices. The one that has a higher hash rate can faster find a new block. However, I would like to point out that it is even better to compare two devices using their hash rate per watt. As the higher hash rate per watt means a better profitability in general.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">Eindhoven University of Technology is a strong player in integrated photonics with Institute of Photonic Integration and its cleanroom fabrication facilities. There is also an accumulation of know-how and expertise about design and fabrication of such devices. The material photonic components based on is InP. This semiconductor allows realization of on-chip lasers. We are wondering, what are your expectations from entities like us? On which parts of the project that you embarked on, you felt the need of assistance?</h3>
<p>Indeed, even though the technology supporting Heavy Hash on the hardware level is already available, there are still many engineering challenges to be resolved (starting from how to minimize energy losses of individual components to the system as a whole, to improving optical proof of work in general). We are open for a collaboration with organizations like yours.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">What would you consider as an improvement to your current design? For example, using multiple wavelengths at once can be attractive to you?</h3>
<p>This is a very good guess: We are currently inspecting the use of multiple wavelengths.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">You mention that high energy consumption of the current proof of work results in regional restrictions where these activities can be done. Such as regions with very cold environments or very cheap electricity. This is a negative aspect and causes instabilities. Do you think relying on photonic chips can make it inaccessible for certain regions?</h3>
<p>We look for a scenario where a low-power mining chip is powered directly by a solar panel (or a similar renewable source). Having low-power mining chips can indeed open new opportunities.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">Why create Heavy Hash, why not just compute SHA256 optically? This accomplishes the same goal without any changes to the Bitcoin codebase?</h3>
<p>True, that would be nice to have SHA256 computed optically. However, the question is in efficiency. SHA256 is indeed computed very efficiently on digital computers. Therefore, there is no point implementing SHA256 optically if there is no guarantee that optical SHA will outperform digital computers in some foreseeable future. Maybe optical SHA will become viable in some ten years, however, we designed Heavy Hash to rely on technology already available today.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">Because not all countries will have access to photonic fabrication facilities in case of a large demand. Do you think this can create new monopolies?</h3>
<p>Our prototype is CMOS-compatible, therefore you can use older fabrication nodes. The ease of fabrication can potentially reduce the chance of new monopolies.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 19px">In terms of security of the proof of work system, can you foresee any malicious practices targeting optical proof of work easier than electronic version?</h3>
<p>To reduce the change of malicious practices we already run a publicly accessible experimental oBTC (optical bitcoin) network (currently, a digital version only). We hope to get insights of the possibility of previously unseen attack vectors.</p>
<p><em>Contact:</em> <a href="mailto: phe_hq@tue.nl">phe_hq@tue.nl</a>, <a href="mailto: f.e.demirer@tue.nl">f.e.demirer@tue.nl</a>.</p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}Glow Talks with Nick Fontaine (Nokia Bell Labs)-Thursday 8th of April 20212021-03-24T00:00:00+00:002021-03-24T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/event/2021/03/24/NewTalk<p><img src="/images/event/2021-03-25-glowtalkNick/MicrosoftTeams-image2.png" alt="" /></p>
<p><a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R_J9zM5gD0qddXBM9g78ZF4ntKlJ2PtOuVRIG--Ko99UMlM2TzlHM0hBNVAzMFNHVTlQT0pITk82TS4u&qrcode=true">Here</a> is the link for registration to Glow Talk with Nick Fontaine which will be held in Thursday 8th of April in online meeting format.</p>
<p>The series of Glow Talks are organised by the <strong>Photonics Society Eindhoven</strong> at TU/e in collaboration with <strong>the Institute for Photonic Integration (IPI)</strong> and <strong>OSA</strong>.</p>
<p>The upcoming event of Glow Talk with Nick Fontaine (Nokia Bell Labs) will be in online meeting format, so that we can visit the USA without even leaving our chairs! In his talk, Nick will tell us about his research on time reversal of optical waves. On top of that, he will give us a special Bell Labs USA lab tour!</p>
<p>Our meetings have a friendly atmosphere with majority being master and phd students who are curious about their career prospects. So, why not take this opportunity for networking as well. We prepared a small glowing gift for you. The numbers are limited, hurry up! You can use <a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R_J9zM5gD0qddXBM9g78ZF4ntKlJ2PtOuVRIG--Ko99UMlM2TzlHM0hBNVAzMFNHVTlQT0pITk82TS4u&qrcode=true">this</a> link for registration.</p>
<p>Hope to see you all there.</p>
<p>PS: In case the link is broken please copy and paste the following address: “https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R_J9zM5gD0qddXBM9g78ZF4ntKlJ2PtOuVRIG–Ko99UMlM2TzlHM0hBNVAzMFNHVTlQT0pITk82TS4u&qrcode=true”.</p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}Glow Talks2021-03-24T00:00:00+00:002021-03-24T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/event/2021/03/24/NewTalk2<p><img src="/images/event/2021-04-16-Glow-Soham/Glow2.png" alt="" /></p>
<p><a href="https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_NDYwYTNiNjktMmRkNC00ODQ0LTg1NTctOWFjMWIyMDgyYTNj%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522cc7df247-60ce-4a0f-9d75-704cf60efc64%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%25224f7f4c68-86a1-48e6-95bb-5544702706fa%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=02807919-2533-4a3c-8465-a6f55011ec6e&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true&suppressPrompt=true">Here</a> is the link for joining the Glow Talk with Soham Saha which will be held in Friday 23rd of April in online meeting format.</p>
<p>The series of Glow Talks are organised by the <strong>Photonics Society Eindhoven</strong> at TU/e in collaboration with <strong>the Institute for Photonic Integration (IPI)</strong> and <strong>OSA</strong>.</p>
<p>The upcoming event will be an online meeting, so that we can visit the USA without even leaving our chairs! Soham’s research focuses on the development of optical materials for dynamic nanophotonic applications, including nonlinear optics, all-optical switching, and on-chip photonics. He found working with new plasmonic materials very challenging, but by following his intuition he discovered a new potential for Zinc oxide!🙌 Thanks to his successful work, he has contributed to 15 papers and been awarded many times, amongst others, a place for the prestigious 2020 Lindau Nobel Meetings🏆✨</p>
<p>Our meetings have a friendly atmosphere with majority being master and phd students who are curious about their career prospects. So, why not take this opportunity for networking as well.</p>
<p>Hope to see you all there.</p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}PhE Photo contest 20202020-10-30T00:00:00+00:002020-10-30T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/event/photo%20contest<p><img src="/images/event/2020-10-30-photo_contest/flyer.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<style>
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<p>This photography contest is organised by the <strong>Photonics Society Eindhoven</strong> at TU/e in collaboration with <strong>the Institute for Photonic Integration (IPI)</strong> and <strong>Te Lintelo Systems BV</strong>.</p>
<h3> <center>Topic of the photo contest: <span style="color: rgb(255,69,0);">An optical effect</span></center></h3>
<h6 id="click-here-to-participate"><a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R_J9zM5gD0qddXBM9g78ZF4ntKlJ2PtOuVRIG--Ko99UNUFJR05HQ1hPRzI3TTdPM0dNMjY5NkdDMC4u"><center>Click here to participate</center></a></h6>
<p><strong>Deadline:</strong> 22nd of November 2020 at 23:59 CEST.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Description:</h3>
<hr />
<p>Light is becoming more important in our approach to nature, science and daily life. From the understanding of the universe, material, energy and its uses in technologies like
smartphones, illumination systems, internet and telecommunications, it is proved that light
is ubiquitous in our daily lives.
As researchers or people involved in understanding optics and photonics, we continuously study and/or utilize optical effects to increase our understanding of the complex nature of light or to create new applications that will benefit us all. However, we sometimes forget how beautiful all these optical effects can be. Therefore, we, the Photonics Society Eindhoven, organize a photography contest to expose the beauty of optical phenomena and to share it with others.</p>
<p>To inspire yourself a little bit, click <a href="https://www.osa-opn.org/home/gallery/photo_contests/">here</a> to visit the works of the winners of the international OSA contest. Here are already 3 examples:</p>
<div class="container flex " style="text-align: center; margin: auto">
<div class="image">
<img class="editable" src="/images/event/2020-10-30-photo_contest/1.png" />
Diffraction of light, Arsham Hamidi
</div>
<div class="image">
<img class="editable" src="/images/event/2020-10-30-photo_contest/2.png" />
Reflections of a display of diamonds, Robert Schalck
</div>
<div class="image">
<img class="editable" src="/images/event/2020-10-30-photo_contest/3.png" />
Laser streams in soap membrane, Jordan I. Diaz
</div>
</div>
<p>The competition is open to PhE members and IPI staff, amateurs and professionals alike. You can submit photos taken with a camera or your smartphone (high-resolution photos are preferred). Your work will be evaluated by an international board composed of fellow TU/e PhE members and professionals from our sponsor Te Lintelo Systems BV.</p>
<h3 style="margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px"><i>Be creative and catch the beauty of the optical effects around us on camera!</i></h3>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Prizes:</h3>
<hr />
<p>We have two prizes for the photo contest:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Prize of the jury:</strong> our jury will decide who has the most creative, beautiful and appealing picture.</li>
<li><strong>Prize of the public:</strong> on the 26th of November we will share the pictures on our website such that people can vote on them. We will award the photographer of the picture with the most likes.</li>
</ol>
<p>Both the prize of the jury and of the public is a voucher of 100 euros!
Note that each participant can only win one of the two prizes. In other words, the winner of the public prize will not be able to also win the jury prize.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Rules:</h3>
<hr />
<p>The picture must align with the following rules:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>No post-editing (Photoshop or/and another photo editing software) is allowed.</strong> You
can only use the settings of your camera/smartphone.</li>
<li>Only two submissions are allowed. In case of 3 and more photos being submitted,
only the first two photos are considered for evaluation.</li>
<li>We came up with 4 evaluation criteria:
<ol>
<li>The title is evaluated for originality and relevance to the photo.</li>
<li>The image description is evaluated for creativity and relevance to the topic.
a. Tell a nice story behind your shot!</li>
<li>The photo itself is evaluated for originality and composition.</li>
<li>The photo is evaluated for the relevance to the theme (optical effects).</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Creative Commons license:</h3>
<hr />
<p><img style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 7px" src="https://licensebuttons.net/l/by/3.0/88x31.png" align="left" width="100" />
Submitted pictures for this photo contest will fall under the Creative Commons license of the type called “Attribution Alone”.</p>
<p>This means that we and our partners (PhE Eindhoven, IPI and Te Lintelo Systems) can use your submitted pictures (e.g. on our website, …) whilst mentioning the name of the photographer. In other words, the Copyright of the images will remain at all times with the photographer.</p>
<h3 style="color: rgb(43,72,107); margin-top: 15px; font-size: 21px">Submit:</h3>
<hr />
<p>Please use the following link to submit your picture(s):</p>
<h6 id="click-here-to-participate-1"><a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=R_J9zM5gD0qddXBM9g78ZF4ntKlJ2PtOuVRIG--Ko99UNUFJR05HQ1hPRzI3TTdPM0dNMjY5NkdDMC4u"><center>Click here to participate</center></a></h6>
<p><strong>Deadline:</strong> 22nd of November 2020 at 23:59 CEST.</p>
<p><strong>Contact:</strong> <a href="mailto: phe_hq@tue.nl">phe_hq@tue.nl</a></p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}Pub lecture: career paths in photonics2019-12-06T00:00:00+00:002019-12-06T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/event/2019/12/06/pub%20lecture<p><img style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; float: left" src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/4.jpg" align="left" width="180" />
This event on 6th of December, 2019 was jointly organized by <a href="https://odin.ele.tue.nl/">ODIN</a>, <a href="phe.tue.nl">PhE</a> and <a href="ieee.tue.nl">IEEE Photonics Society</a>. We invited three guests that have followed careers in photonics high-tech companies. They gave short talks about their careers and why they choose to work in photonics, followed by an open discussion in which the audience can address their questions to our guests. Afterward, we had drinks at <em>Walhalla</em>, where the discussion continued in a more informal setting.</p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/1.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/2.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/3.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/4.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/5.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/6.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/7.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/8.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/9.jpg" alt="pub lecture" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-12-06-pub_lecture/flyer.png" alt="pub lecture" /></p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}This event on 6th of December, 2019 was jointly organized by ODIN, PhE and IEEE Photonics Society. We invited three guests that have followed careers in photonics high-tech companies. They gave short talks about their careers and why they choose to work in photonics, followed by an open discussion in which the audience can address their questions to our guests. Afterward, we had drinks at Walhalla, where the discussion continued in a more informal setting.Pizza talk2019-11-04T00:00:00+00:002019-11-04T00:00:00+00:00phe.tue.nl/event/2019/11/04/pizza%20talk<p><img style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; float: left" src="/images/event/2019-11-04-pizza_talk/1.jpg" align="left" width="180" />
On November 4th, 2019 Katarzyna Ławniczuk from <a href="https://brightphotonics.eu/">Bright Photonics</a> talked about how designing photonic integrated circuits works. After the talk, she answered questions from the audience, and we enjoyed delicious pizza together.</p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-11-04-pizza_talk/2.jpg" alt="pizza talk" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-11-04-pizza_talk/3.jpg" alt="pizza talk" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/event/2019-11-04-pizza_talk/flyer.png" alt="pizza talk" /></p>{"name"=>nil, "email"=>nil, "twitter"=>nil}On November 4th, 2019 Katarzyna Ławniczuk from Bright Photonics talked about how designing photonic integrated circuits works. After the talk, she answered questions from the audience, and we enjoyed delicious pizza together.