Abstract

This paper is the third in series of publications describing various alternative combinatorial logic based optical computing architectures.^1,2 Within the first paper titled "Combinatorial Logic Based Optical Computing," justification for combinatorial logic is initially debated through the coupled use of extensive optical interconnects with the natural "and-or-invert" capability of most every optical system. Figure 1 depicts the interconnect concept. Optical systems are capable of connecting points between planes in any 3 dimensional configuration by using, for example, Fourier transform holography, global fibers, or even simple lenses, depending on the interconnect complexity desired. The ability for an optical system to interconnect in three dimensions, is, in the opinion of the authors, the absolute greatest asset of an optical computer. As shown in figure 1 and explained in more detail in reference 1, should an optical computer completely exploit it's fully global interconnect capability between a set of spatial light modulators, where each has a space bandwidth product of 256 by 256, then the total interconnect gate density reaches 4 × 10⁹. The problem plaguing silicon integrated circuit designers is the inability to interconnect various processing elements. This inability limits the chip's ultimate performance in terms of operations per square centimeter of silicon.

© 1987 Optical Society of America