Optical Systolic Array Processors.
Abstract
Multiplication with 16 bit accuracy can be accomplished by optical means and is competitive and superior in speed to fully electronic devices if a sum-of-products algorithm is being implemented. The advantage of optics is not in the multiply function where electronic multipliers will be generally faster due to the extra analog-to-digital converters needed in the optical device. The optics advantage appears when many of the resulting numerical products need to be added which is accomplished by integrating sequential light pulses onto one detector. The bottleneck for digital addition is the arithmetic carry terms which are evaluated sequentially. We also present and analyze a threshold logic analog-to-digital converter intended for the optical multiplier which demonstrates increased speed over a successive approximation A/D without the complexity of a flash converter. We also present a significant step which is the sideways summer. The sideways summer greatly reduces the time required for the one step of electronic addition which is part of the digital-multiplication by analog-convolution algorithm. This electronic addition is needed to convert the resulting mixed binary form of the output into a normal binary number. Keywords include: Optical signal processing, and Computer architecture.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA162383
Entities
People
- H. J. Caulfield
- Roger Putnam
- Scott Israel
Organizations
- Aerodyne Research