Abstract

Digital operations can be implemented by: 1) converting the operation into a sequence of logic steps that can be realized by gates or 2) reading the output directly from a stored truth table. In spite of the superiority of the latter method in speed, it has not been common in the history of data processing. This is partially due to the large sizes of the tables that need to be stored, and partially due to the numerous efficient algorithms that can be programmed on general von Neumann type computers. However, a variety of recent technological advances and a growing need for parallel processing have generated renewed interest in truth-table look-up processing.

© 1985 Optical Society of America