Abstract

The development of high capacity parallel optical memories has opened up the possibility for very high data transfer rates from secondary storage devices [1]. Current electronic interfaces may not have sufficient bandwidth to utilize these high data rates, and thus a bottleneck can be created between the secondary storage and main memory. A primary use of these large capacity memories is storage of records in a database environment, where the majority of transactions comprise searches for data that match a given search argument [2]. Electronic database processors have made good use of preprocessing units to filter the data being transferred to main memory in an effort to reduce the data flow rates to usable levels. A similar filtering unit that can operate on the parallel optical data output from an optical memory would provide even greater benefits. We have presented in an earlier paper a filtering unit consisting of cascaded arrays of optoelectronic logic elements [3]. The major components in this filtering unit are optoelectronic XOR and AND gates arrays. Previously we reported the demonstration of the XOR array using standard table-top optics [4]. In this paper we present a complete optical system redesign using a slotted plate platform, developed elsewhere [5]. The system uses AND and XOR arrays in the demonstration of the projection and selection modules of the database filter.

© 1995 Optical Society of America