NEUROmorphic energy-efficient secure accelerators based on Phase change materials aUgmented siLicon photonicS

HORIZON.2.4HORIZON-RIAID: 101070238

EC Contribution

€83,195

Consortium Size

15 orgs

▶Summary

The growing need to transfer massive amounts of data among multitudes of interconnected devices for e.g., self-driving vehicles, IoT or industry 4.0 has led to a quest towards low-power and secure approaches to locally processing data. Neuromorphic computing, a brain-inspired approach, addresses this need by radically changing the processing of information. Although neuromorphic electrical computing systems offer advantages in terms of CMOS implementations and scalability, they inherit limitations of conventional electronics such as low energy-efficiency, high latency and low bandwidth density. Besides, such systems often require robust security layers for e.g., safety-critical applications. Security layers based on memory-stored secret keys are prone to several types of memory-accessing attacks. Therefore, silicon hardware approaches for security primitives such as physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are currently investigated because of their absence of long-term digital memory storage. Although electronic PUFs have received major attention thanks to their native CMOS implementation, for secure authentication they are prone to machine learning and side-channel attacks due to their CMOS technology.The NEUROPULS project aims to build next-generation low-power and secure edge-computing systems by developing novel photonic computing architectures and security layers based on photonic PUFs in augmented silicon photonics CMOS-compatible platforms. The integration of emerging non-volatile phase change materials for synapses/neurons and III-V materials for on-chip spiking sources, for the first time, will allow to build novel neuromorphic accelerators featuring RISC-V compliant interfaces for smooth adoption and programmability. Optimal performance will be achieved thanks to a novel full-system simulation platform for design space exploration. Three relevant use-cases will be considered for benchmarking to demonstrate 2 orders of magnitude energy efficiency improvement.

Consortium (15)

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS

coordinator

🇪🇸 ALBORA TECHNOLOGIES SLES

partner

🇨🇿 ARGOTECH ASCZ

partner

🇪🇸 BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER CENTRO NACIONAL DE SUPERCOMPUTACIONES

partner

🇫🇷 COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVESFR

partner

🇫🇷 ECOLE CENTRALE DE LYONFR

partner

🇬🇷 ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINONGR

partner

🇧🇪 HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE BELGIUMBE

partner

🇵🇹 INESC ID - INSTITUTO DE ENGENHARIADE SISTEMAS E COMPUTADORES, INVESTIGACAO E DESENVOLVIMENTO EM LISBOAPT

partner

🇩🇪 LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHENDE

partner

🇮🇹 POLITECNICO DI TORINOIT

partner

🇩🇪 TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT BERLINDE

partner

🇮🇹 UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI VERONAIT

partner

🇫🇷 UNIVERSITE BOURGOGNE EUROPEFR

partner

🇧🇪 UNIVERSITEIT GENTBE

partner

Project Results (63)

Source: CORDIS, the EU research results database.

▶Publications (51)

Braided interferometer mesh for robust photonic matrix-vector multiplications with non-ideal components

Optics Express· 2025DOI

Marchesin, Federico; Hejda, Matěj; Melendez Carmona, Tzamn; Di Carlo, Stefano; Savino, Alessandro; Pavanello, Fabio; Van Varenbergh, Thomas; Bienstman, Peter

High‐Endurance and Energy‐Efficient All‐Optical Programming of Scalable Silicon Waveguides with Integrated Phase‐Change Material Patches

Advanced Optical Materials· 2025DOI

Rajath Sawant, Anthony Albanese, Arnaud Rogemont, Gregorio Gonzalez‐Cortes, Yoann Brûlé, Lara Karam, Jean‐Baptiste Jager, Stephane Malhouitre, Benoit Charbonnier, Aurélien Coillet, Pierre Noé, Benoit Cluzel

Leveraging nonlinear dynamics in silicon microring resonator arrays for image classification via reservoir computing

AI and Optical Data Sciences VI· 2025DOI

Foradori, Alessandro; Lugnan, Alessio; Pavesi, Lorenzo; Bienstman, Peter

Phase change materials for reconfigurable photonic integrated circuits

Open Access Government· 2025DOI

Pierre Noé; Benoit Cluzel; Stéphane Malhouitre; Benoît Charbonnier; Fabio Pavanello

Complexity Assessment of Analog Security Primitives Using the Disentropy of Autocorrelation

arxiv· 2024DOI

Jimenez, Paul; Cardoso, Raphael; Gomes de Queiroz, Mauricio; Abdalla, Mohab; Marchand, Cédric; Letartre, Xavier; Pavanello, Fabio

IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing

IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing· 2024DOI

Carpegna, Alessio; Savino, Alessandro; Di Carlo, Stefano

Neuromorphic Heart Rate Monitors: Neural State Machines for Monotonic Change Detection

2024 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS)· 2024DOI

Carpegna, Alessio; De Luca, Chiara; Pozzi, Federico Emanuele; Savino, Alessandro; Di Carlo, Stefano; Indiveri, Giacomo; Donati, Elisa

On-chip photonic neural network for multi-wavelength time-dependent signal processing

2024 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC)· 2024DOI

A. Lugnan, A. Foradori, S. Biasi, P. Bienstman, L. Pavesi

Automated Black-box Testing of Mass Assignment Vulnerabilities in RESTful APIs

ICSE '23: Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering· 2023DOI

Corradini, Davide; PASQUA, MICHELE; Ceccato, Mariano

Emergent self-adaptation in an integrated photonic neural network for backpropagation-free learning

Crossref· 2023DOI

Alessio Lugnan; Samarth Aggarwal; Frank Brückerhoff-Plückelmann; C David Wright; Wolfram Pernice; Harish Bhaskaran; Peter Bienstman

Enabling Design Space Exploration of RISC-V Accelerator-rich Computing Systems on gem5

RISC-V Summit 2023· 2023

Odysseas Chatzopoulos; George Papadimitriou; Vasileios Karakostas; Dimitris Gizopoulos

Energy Efficiency of Out-of-Order CPUs: Comparative Study and Microarchitectural Hotspot Characterization of RISC-V Designs

2023 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC)· 2023DOI

Chatzopoulos, Odysseas; Papadimitriou, George; Wong, Wing Shek; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

Estimating the Failures and Silent Errors Rates of CPUs Across ISAs and Microarchitectures

2023 IEEE International Test Conference (ITC)· 2023DOI

Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Papadimitriou, George; Chatzopoulos, Odysseas

NEUROPULS: NEUROmorphic energy-efficient secure accelerators based on Phase change materials aUgmented siLicon photonicS

2023 IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS)· 2023DOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Marchand, Cédric; O'Connor, Ian; Orobtchouk, Régis; Mandorlo, Fabien; Letartre, Xavier; Cueff, Sébastien; Vatajelu, Ioana; Di Natale, Giorgio; Cluzel, Benoit; Coillet, Aurélien; Charbonnier, Benoit; Noé, Pierre; Kaván, František; Zoldak, Martin; Szaj, Michal; Bienstman, Peter; van Vaerenbergh, Thomas; Rührmair, Ulrich; Flores, Paulo; Guerra E Silva, Luis; Chaves, Ricardo; Silveira, Luis Miguel; Ceccato, Mariano; Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Papadimitriou, George; Karakostas, Vasileios; Brando, Axel; Cazorla, Francisco Javier; Canal, Ramon; Closas, Pau; Gusi Amigo, Adrià; Crovetti, Paolo Stefano; Carpegna, Alessio; Tzamn, Melendez Carmona; Di Carlo, Stefano; Savino, Alessandro

Phase‐Change and Ovonic Materials (Fourth Edition)

Crossref· 2023DOI

Noé, Pierre; Kooi, Bart J.; Wuttig, Matthias

Photonic Physical Unclonable Function Based on Symmetric Microring Resonator Arrays

Frontiers In Optics (FiO) - 2023· 2023DOI

Jimenez, Paul; Cardoso, Raphael; Gomes de Queiroz, Mauricio; Abdalla, Mohab; Zrounba, Clément; Letartre, Xavier; Marchand, Cédric; Ruhrmair, Ulrich; Pavanello, Fabio

Remote Attestation of IoT Devices using Physically Unclonable Functions: Recent Advancements and Open Research Challenges

CPSIoTSec '23: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on CPS&IoT Security and Privacy· 2023DOI

Marastoni, Niccolò; Ceccato, Mariano

Silent Data Corruptions: Microarchitectural Perspectives

IEEE Transactions on Computers· 2023DOI

Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

Silent Data Errors: Sources, Detection, and Modeling

2023 IEEE 41st VLSI Test Symposium (VTS)· 2023DOI

Singh, Adit; Chakravarty, Sreejit; Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

Special Session: Neuromorphic hardware design and reliability from traditional CMOS to emerging technologies

Proceedings of 2023 IEEE 41st VLSI Test Symposium (VTS)· 2023DOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Vatajelu, Ioana; Bosio, Alberto; van Vaerenbergh, Thomas; Bienstman, Peter; Charbonnier, Benoit; Carpegna, Alessio; Di Carlo, Stefano; Savino, Alessandro

Visual identity, project website and social network account

ZENODO· 2023DOI

Van Vaerenbergh, Thomas

A novel route to secure and low-power accelerators for edge computing

Open AccessDOI

PAVANELLO, FABIO

Accelerating the development of secure and reliable photonic and electronic systems

Open AccessDOI

Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

Advancing Cloud Computing Capabilities on gem5 by Implementing the RISC-V Hypervisor Extension

arvixDOI

Fragkoulis, George-Marios; Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

An Ultra-low-loss Compact Phase-Change Material-based Hybrid-mode Interferometer for Photonic Memories

arxivDOI

Fabio, Pavanello; Dwivedi, Ranjeet; orobtchouk, regis

arvix

Advancing Cloud Computing Capabilities on gem5 by Implementing the RISC-V Hypervisor ExtensionDOI

George-Marios Fragkoulis, Nikos Karystinos, George Papadimitriou, Dimitris Gizopoulos

Braided interferometer mesh for robust photonic matrix-vector multiplications with non-ideal components

Optics ExpressDOI

Marchesin, Federico; Hejda, Matěj; Melendez Carmona, Tzamn; Di Carlo, Stefano; Savino, Alessandro; Pavanello, Fabio; Van Varenbergh, Thomas; Bienstman, Peter

Brain-like chips are boosting computers and battling cybercrime

Fabio Pavanello; Matěj Hejda

Complexity Assessment of Analog and Digital Security Primitives Signals Using the Disentropy of Autocorrelation

Paul Jimenez, Raphael Cardoso, Maur´ıcio Gomes de Queiroz, Mohab Abdalla, Cedric Marchand, Xavier Letartre, Fabio Pavanello

Complexity Assessment of Analog Security Primitives Using the Disentropy of Autocorrelation

arxivDOI

Jimenez, Paul; Cardoso, Raphael; Gomes de Queiroz, Mauricio; Abdalla, Mohab; Marchand, Cédric; Letartre, Xavier; Pavanello, Fabio

gem5-MARVEL: Microarchitecture-Level Resilience Analysis of Heterogeneous SoC Architectures

IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)DOI

Chatzopoulos, Odysseas; Papadimitriou, George; Karakostas, Vasileios; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

Harpocrates: Breaking the Silence of CPU Faults through Hardware-in-the-Loop Program Generation

ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), Buenos Aires, ArgentinaDOI

Karystinos, Nikos; Chatzopoulos, Odysseas; Fragkoulis, George-Marios; Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Gurumurthi, Sudhanva

Impact of Voltage Scaling on Soft Errors Susceptibility of Multicore Server CPUs

IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), Toronto, ON, Canada

Agiakatsikas, D., Papadimitriou, G., Karakostas, V., Gizopoulos, D., Psarakis, M., Bélanger-Champagne, C., & Blackmore, E.

Large-scale neural network in passive silicon photonics for biologically plausible learning

DOI

Alessio Lugnan, Alessandro Foradori, Stefano Biasi, Peter Bienstman, Lorenzo Pavesi

Lighting the way to better security - The NEUROPULS photonics-based approach

HiPEACinfoDOI

PAVANELLO, Fabio

Nature Communications

Emerging opportunities and challenges for the future of reservoir computingDOI

Yan, Min; Huang, Can; Bienstman, Peter; Tino, Peter; Lin, Wei; Sun, Jie

Neuromorphic architectures based on augmented silicon photonics platforms

61st ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)DOI

Hejda, Matěj; Marchesin, Federico; Papadimitriou, George; Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Charbonnier, Benoit; Orbtchouk, Régis; Bienstman, Peter; Van Varenbergh, Thomas; Pavanello, Fabio

Nitrogen-Doped GeSe1−xTex Chalcogenide Thin Films: A Candidate for On-Chip Low-Loss Reconfigurable Photonics and Nonlinear Device Applications

Open Access GovernmentDOI

Albanese, Anthony; Tomelleri, Martina; Dory, Jean-Baptiste; Karam, Lara; Licitra, Christophe; Coillet, Aurélien; Hippert, Françoise; Cluzel, Benoit; Noé, Pierre

Optical Properties of GeSe1-x Tex Chalcogenide MaterialsPromising for on-Chip Low and Ultra-Low LossReconfigurable Photonics and Nonlinear Devices

physica status solidi (RRL) – Rapid Research LettersDOI

Albanese, Anthony; Tomelleri, Martina; Karam, Laura; Dory, Jean-Baptiste; Licitra, Christophe; Charbonnier, Benoit; Jager, Jean-Baptiste; Coillet, Aurélien; Cluzel, Benoit; Noé, Pierre

Phase-change materials for photonic applications

PhotoniquesDOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Charbonnier, Benoit; Noe, Pierre

Phase-change materials for photonic applications

PhotoniquesDOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Charbonnier, Benoit; Noe, Pierre

Reservoir computing with all-optical non-fading memory in a self-pulsing microresonator network

ARXIVDOI

Alessio Lugnan, Stefano Biasi, Alessandro Foradori, Peter Bienstman, Lorenzo Pavesi

Roadmap on Neuromorphic Photonics

arxivDOI

Brunner, Daniel; Shastri, Bhavin J.; Al-Qadasi, Mohammed; Ballani, H.; Barbay, Sylvain; Biasi, Stefano; Bienstman, Peter; Biloudeau, Simon; Bogaerts, Wim; Böhm, Fabian; Brennan, G.; Buckley, Sonia; Cai, Xinlun; Calvanese Strinati, Marcello; Canakci, B.; Charbonnier, Benoit; Chemnitz, Mario; Chen, Yitong; Chiles, Jeff; Choi, Suyeon; Christodoulides, Demetrios; Chrostowski, Lukas; Chu, J.; Clegg, J.H.; Cletheroe, D.; Conti, Claudio; Dai, Qionghai; Di Lauro, Luigi; Diamantopoulos, Nikolaos-Panteleimon; Dinc, Ulas Niyazi; Ewaniuk, Jacob; Fan, Shanhui; Fang, Lu; Franchi, Riccardo; Freire, Pedro; Gentilini, Silvia; Gigan, Sylvain; Giorgi, Gian Luca; Gkantsidis, C.; Gladrow, J.; Goi, Elena; Goldmann, M.; Grabulosa, A.; Min, Gu; Guo, Xianxin; Hejda, Matej; Horst, F.; Hsieh, Hih-Liang; Hu, Jianqi; Hu, Juejun; Huang, Chaoran; Hurtado, Antonio; Juarigue, Lina; Kalinin, K.P.; Kamalian-Kopae, Morteza; Kelly, D.J.; Khajavikhan, Mercedeh; Kremer, H.; Laydevant, Jeremie; C. Lederman, Joshua; Lee, Jongheon; Lenstra, Daan; H.Y. Li, Gordon; Li, Mo; Li, Yuhang; Lin, Xing; Lin, Zhongjin; Lis, Mieszko; Lüdge, Kathy; Lugnan, Alessio; Lupo, Alessandro; Lvovsky, A.I.; Manuylovich, Egor; Marandi, Alireza; Marchesin, Federico; Massar, Serge; McCaughan, Adam; L. McMahon; Moralis-Pegios, Miltiadis; Morandotti, Roberto; Moser, Christophe; J. Moss, David; Mukherjee, Avilash; Nikdast, Mahdi; Offrein, B.G.; Oguz, Ilker; Oripov, Bakhrom; O'Shea, G.; Ozcan, Aydogan; Parmigiani, F.; Pasricha, Sudeep; Pavanello, Fabio; Pavesi, Lorenzo; Peserico, Nicola; Pickup, L.; Pierangeli, Davide; Pleros, Nikos; Porte, Xavier; Primavera, Bryce A.; Prucnal, Paul; Psaltis, Demetri; Puts, Lukas; Qiao, Fei; Rahmani, B.; Raineri, Fabrice; A. Rios Ocampo, Carlos; Robertson, Joshua; Romeira, Bruno; Roques-Carmes, Charles; Rotenberg, Nir; Rowstron, A.; Schoenhardt, Steffen; Schwartz, Russel L.T.; Shainline, Jeffrey M.; Shekhar, Sudip; Skalli, A.; Sohoni, Mandar; J. Sorger, Volker; C. Soriano, Miguel; Spall, James; Stabile, Ripalta; Stiller, Birgit; Sunada, Satoshi; Tefas, Anastasios; Tousson, Bassem; Tsakyridis, Apostolos; K. Turitsyn, Sergei; Der Sande, Guy Van; Van Vaerenbergh, Thomas; Veraldi, Daniele; Verschaffelt, Guy; Vlieg, E.A.; Wang, Hao; Wang, Tianyu; Wetzstein, Gordon; G. Wright, Logan; Wu, Changming; Wu, Chu; Wu, Jiamin; Xia, Fei; Xu, Xingyuan; Yang, Hangbo; Yildirim, Mustafa; Ben Yoo, S.J.; Youngblood, Nathan; Zambrini, Roberta; Zhang, Haiou; Zhang, Weipeng

Security layers and related services within the Horizon Europe NEUROPULS project

CrossrefDOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Marchand, Cédric; Jimenez, Paul; Letartre, Xavier; Chaves, Ricardo; Marastoni, Niccolò; Lovato, Alberto; Ceccato, Mariano; Papadimitriou, George; Karakostas, Vasileios; Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Bardini, Roberta; Carmona, Tzamm Melendez; Di Carlo, Stefano; Savino, Alessandro; Lerch, Laurence; Ruhrmair, Ulrich; Vinagrero Gutierrez, Sergio; Di Natale, Giorgio; Vatajelu, Elena Ioana

Security layers for neuromorphic photonic accelerators

Open Access Government

PAVANELLO, FABIO; Chaves, Ricardo; Ceccato, Mariando; Savino, Alessandro; Marchand, Cédric; Seifert, Jean-Pierre; Vatajelu, Elena Ioana

Silent Data Corruptions in Computing Systems: Early Predictions and Large-Scale Measurements

2024 IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS)DOI

Gizopoulos, Dimitris; Papadimitriou, George; Chatzopoulos, Odysseas; Karystinos, Nikos; Dixit, Harish; Sankar, Sriram

SimPoint-Based Microarchitectural Hotspot & Energy-Efficiency Analysis of RISC-V OoO CPUs

2024 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS)DOI

Chatzopoulos, Odysseas; Trakosa, Maria; Papadimitriou, George; Wong, Wing Shek; Gizopoulos, Dimitris

The Impact of Feature Representation on the Accuracy of Photonic Neural Networks

APL Machine LearningDOI

Gomes de Queiroz, Mauricio; Jimenez, Paul; Cardoso, Raphael; Vidaletti Costa, Mateus; Abdalla, Mohab; O'Connor, Ian; Bosio, Alberto; Pavanello, Fabio

Use case n.1 : Revolutionizing Network Security: How NEUROPULS is Leading the Way with Advanced Anomaly Detection

DOI

Hejda, Matěj; Pawlak, Clara; Pavanello, Fabio

Use case n.2: Protecting Critical Applications: The Role of GNSS Anti-Jamming in the NEUROPULS Project

DOI

Pavanello, Fabio; Gusi, Adria; Pawlak, Clara

Use case n.3: Driving into the Future: NEUROPULS and the Next Generation of Autonomous Vehicle Performance efficiency