Photonic convolutional accelerator and neural network in the Tera-OPs regime based on Kerr microcombs

We report a photonic RF arbitrary waveform generator and phase encoded signal generator using a soliton crystal micro-comb source with a free spectral range (FSR) of 48.9 GHz, that provides 80 wavelengths. We achieve arbitrary waveform shapes including square waveforms with a tunable duty ratio from 10% to 90%, sawtooth waveforms with a slope ratio of 0.2 to 1, and a symmetric concave quadratic chirp waveform with an instantaneous frequency of sub GHz. The phase encoded signal generator achieves a high pulse compression ratio of 30 and phase encoding rates from 2 to 6 Gb/s This work verifies the effectiveness of using microcombs for high-performance, broad bandwidth, nearly user-defined RF waveform generation.