Abstract

Optics is starting to get serious consideration in application areas previously dominated by electronics. One such application area is supercomputing where efforts to increase performance are beginning to turn toward the interconnection of many microprocessors rather than trying to attain a single super processor. The importance of communications in these new multiprocessing architectures has focused attention on optics to provide the necessary bandwidths. This overview of the opportunity for inserting optics into these parallel supercomputer architectures will begin with a brief description of parallel architecture, followed by a discussion of the critical optical device and materials needs.

© 1989 Optical Society of America