Abstract

The application of optical integrated circuits to optical computing has been discussed in the literature; for logic operations^[1~3], for residue arithmetics^[4~6], for polynomial processors^[7], and so on. The optical integrated circuits are suitable particularly for optical array processing because the elementary devices can be easily duplicated and arranged in regular way with so-called step-and-repeat process. Until recently, those integrated circuits are usually controlled by external electric signals (Fig.1 a); which cause the input bottleneck problem as well as electro-magnetic interferences from both the environment and control signal wires themselves. In this paper, the concept and advantages of optical array processing with optical integrated circuits whose functions can be controlled by external ‘optical’ signals^[8](Fig.1 b) are discussed.

© 1985 Optical Society of America