Optical database machine using spatial light rebroadcasters

An optical database machine using spatial light rebroadcasters (SLRs) is proposed to speed up relational operations on large databases. A SLR is a nonvolatile memory device with large storage capacity and high read/write speed. Since most of the database operations can be performed directly on the SLRs, one doesn´t have the I/O bottleneck, which is a major problem in other database machine architecture. One can search data stored in the SLR in parallel by a single search operation. Parallel relational operation algorithms are developed for the proposed architecture, and the author evaluates the performance of the machine for various cases. Compared to the other database machines, performance of the proposed architecture is at least a order of magnitude faster due to the parallel processing capability and high read/write speed of the SLR