A bit-plane architecture for optical computing with two-dimensional symbolic substitution

An architecture based on optical technology is presented for constructing parallel computers. The architecture uses optics for its ultrahigh speed, massive parallelism, and dense connectivity. The processing is based on a technique called 2-D symbolic substitution that can be implemented with very fast optical components. Two-dimensional symbolic substitution algorithms are developed for arithmetic/logic operations as well as for complex scientific computations such as matrix algebra and fast Fourier transforms (FFTs). The predicted performance of the system is compared with the performance of existing electronic array processors and is shown to be potentially superior. The bit-plane architecture is shown to be both feasible and economical based on state-of-the-art optical and electrooptical technologies