A Structural Approach to the Photonic Processor
Abstract
This document is the product of an overview study on the field of photonics. Photonics is currently in the highest priority category of the DoD's critical technologies list because it is perceived as a potential solution to the bottleneck of serial processing (i.e., the von Neumann bottleneck in computer processors). These bottlenecks are occurring in critical military applications, such as automatic target recognition, clutter rejection in infrared search and track (IRST) applications, vision-assisted piloting tasks in unmanned robotic vehicles (e.g., Remotely Piloted Vehicles, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or Unmanned Underwater Vehicles), and imaging Identification Friend or Foe. The study's intended purpose was to investigate how and where photonics could enhance current and future military systems. Funded by RAND in the summer of 1989, this study had two tasks. The goal of task (1) was to search the literature and define the types of applications in which photonic processing has demonstrated significant performance advantages over digital electronic processors. Task 2 was to identify how and where photonics might play a useful role in future military applications as the technology matures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA260688
Entities
People
- Deborah Jackson
Organizations
- RAND Corporation