Abstract

The computational throughput of a parallel architecture is largely dependent on it’s communication bandwidth. The communication bandwidth available in the present day parallel systems is reaching saturation due to the inherent limitations of transmitting electronic signals. To overcome this problem, researchers have considered contention-free optical beams as an efficient means of interconnection [GLKA84,JS87], Unlike the electronic signal, the optical interconnection offers dual advantages of larger bandwidth and fan-out. With the availability of such interconnection the field of Optical computing is being diversified from the development of analog optical process sors [CRFH81] to digital optical and electro-optical computers [Hua84,EK88], Such electro-optical systems, capable of exploiting the speed and parallelism of optical systems together with the programmability and accuracy of electronic computers, promise tremendous computational power.

© 1989 Optical Society of America