Digital optical arithmetic processor based on symbolic substitution

The authors propose a digital optical arithmetic processor based on symbolic substitution using holographic matched and space-invariant filters. The proposed system performs Boolean logic, binary addition, and subtraction in a highly parallel manner, depending on the substitution rules for each operation. The processing time depends on the word size but not on the array size. Substitution rules for binary subtraction with conventional binary number representation are presented, and some advantages over other parallel arithmetic processing methods are discussed. Crosstalk in symbolic substitution and the operating principles of the proposed system are also described.<>