Abstract

The optical transpose interconnection system (OTIS) is an optical interconnection scheme that provides transpose transformations on 2-D indexed 2-D arrays of transmitters and detectors. These transformations are required in shuffle-tree graph¹ (STG) architectures. The STG supports various matrix computations, such as matrix transpose, vector outer-product, and matrix-vector multiplications. These computations are useful for signal processing, artificial intelligence, relational databases, artificial neural systems, and crossbar interconnections. The OTIS optical system can also be used to implement $\sqrt{\text{N}}/2$-shuffle² multistage interconnection networks (MINs) which have the advantage that only a constant number of optical stages is required for routing or sorting applications. The OTIS optical system is bi-directional. This can prove useful for backpropagation neural networks and MINs. In this case, it allows blocking information inside the MIN to be accessed by a data packet sender. We will present the design and experimental demonstration of the OTIS optical system. We will also present the necessary electronics that connect the transmitter and detector subarrays allowing efficient optoelectronic implementations of shuffle-tree graphs and $\sqrt{\text{N}}/2$-shuffle architectures.

© 1992 Optical Society of America