arXiv:2608.02229cs.LG2026-08

光子贝叶斯神经网络受限协同设计,提升不确定性感知能力

Constrained Co-Design for Photonic Bayesian Neural Networks

论文配图:Constrained Co-Design for Photonic Bayesian Neural Networks
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 将光子贝叶斯网络推导为受约束的变分推断,系统分析硬件限制
  • 在多个数据集上验证:可容忍范围内性能与不确定性可恢复
  • 提出软硬件协同设计指南,区分可训练补偿与需硬件修改的限制

经典神经网络在模糊或分布外(OOD)数据上常产生过度自信的预测,这在安全关键场景中风险日益增加。贝叶斯神经网络(BNN)通过用概率分布替代确定性参数,提供了一种有原则的不确定性感知框架,但重复采样会增加延迟、内存流量和能耗。光子概率计算利用固有的光学随机性,提供了快速并行采样的潜在方案。然而,光子BNN并非理想的采样器:量化、编程误差、动态范围以及均值/方差表示范围等模拟约束,限制了可在硬件上实现的变分族。本文研究哪些硬件限制阻碍了可扩展的光子BNN推理,如何建模这些约束,并确定光子BNN在小型概念验证网络之外可容忍的范围。我们将光子BNN推理形式化为受约束的随机变分推断,对随机性位置、模态、量化、编程误差及均值/方差边界进行系统消融实验。基于结果,我们提炼出具体的协同设计准则,区分可通过训练补偿的硬件约束与需要硬件或架构干预的约束。在Dirty-MNIST、CIFAR-10和CINIC-10上,于耦合且符合硬件现实的约束下进行验证,使用Fashion-MNIST和SVHN作为OOD基准,结果表明:当所需变分族仍在可表示范围内时,硬件感知训练能恢复预测性能与不确定性质量;而超出表示极限则需针对性硬件修改。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Classical neural networks frequently produce overconfident predictions on ambiguous or out-of-distribution (OOD) data, a liability that grows with each AI system deployed in safety-critical real-world scenarios. Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) provide a principled framework for uncertainty-aware prediction by replacing deterministic parameters with probability distributions, but repeated sampling increases latency, memory traffic, and energy consumption. Photonic probabilistic computing offers a promising alternative by exploiting intrinsic optical stochasticity for fast and parallel sampling. However, photonic BNNs are not ideal samplers: analog constraints on quantization, programming error, dynamic range, and representable mean and variance restrict the variational families that can be implemented in hardware. In this work, we study which hardware-imposed constraints limit scalable photonic BNN inference, how these constraints can be represented, and which ranges can be tolerated by photonic BNNs beyond small proof-of-concept networks. We formulate photonic BNN inference as constrained stochastic variational inference and perform a systematic ablation study over stochasticity location, stochasticity modality, quantization, programming error, and mean/variance bounds. From these results, we derive concrete co-design guidelines that distinguish hardware constraints that can be compensated by training from those requiring hardware or architecture intervention. We validate these guidelines under coupled, hardware-realistic constraints on Dirty-MNIST, CIFAR-10, and CINIC-10, using Fashion-MNIST and SVHN as OOD benchmarks, showing that hardware-aware training recovers predictive performance and uncertainty quality whenever the required variational family remains representable, whereas violations of representational limits require targeted hardware modifications.

贝叶斯网络光子计算不确定性估计协同设计

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