Abstract

Optical array processors inherently take advantage of parallelism and show great promise for image/data processing or interconnection networks where electronics has been limited. In order for the optical array processors to compete with electronics, however, they must be ultra-fast (above GHz), highly parallel (> 10⁴ pixels), or moderate in both, depending upon the application. Since an ultra-high frame rate requires careful circuit design and more electronics needs to be in corporated in each pixel, parallelism has to be trade off for speed. Arrays constructed of simple pixels, on the other hand, provide high parallelism with fairly fast speed (1 ~ 100 MHz), which are very suitable for image processing and some other applications.

© 1993 Optical Society of America