Abstract

The optoelectronic connectionist machine (OCM) presented in this paper consists of three primary components: a 1 × 256 electrically addressed, SmA ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) modulator, which represents the input neurons, a 2-D, optically addressed spatial light modulator (OASLM), which is used to encode and modify the connections between input and output units, and a CCD camera that differentially detects the bipolar connections and inputs the resultant output vector to the controlling IBM PC via a data translation board. The input patterns are amplitude encoded on 100 μm × 25.4-mm FLC pixels in the input array. The synaptic weights are displayed on a computer driven cathode ray tube (CRT) and written onto the reflection-mode OASLM. The Litton CRT contains (640 × 480) 30-μm pixels in a 1-in. screen. Each pixel has a maximum of sixty-four gray levels. The OASLM has a resolution of 70 lp/mm at 50% MTF. The OCM was designed to interconnect 256 input units to 256 output units at megahertz rates using the high speed, electroclinic FLC input SLM.

© 1991 Optical Society of America