Abstract

One of the principle system performance considerations in the design of an optical linear algebra processor is how to improve its computational accuracy. The fundamental limitation in achieving high accuracy is the underlying noise of the system. As active spatial light modulators(SLMs) are needed to perform multiplication for real-time operation of optical linear algebra processors, the noise properties of these SLMs are of great interest in performing system design tradeoffs to maximize accuracy. We have experimentally measured the noise properties of several SLMs that are currently being considered in OLAP architectures. We present the experimental results and, using these results, compare the devices using the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the output of system.

© 1990 Optical Society of America