A Digital Design Methodology for Optical Computing

Optical computing can have significant advantages over electronic computing in terms of system speed, but only if the digital design exploits regularity. The design methods must be simple in order to manage the complexity of optics in a digital computer. This book presents a valuable new methodology for simplifying the design of digital circuits for systems that use optics as an interconnection medium. The methodology utilizes the potential of optics in computers by mapping arbitrary logic functions onto regular hardware structures, such as optical programmable logic arrays.

Murdocca, provides a brief history of the field and looks at current research trends, including the creation of regular arrays of identical logic gates and the need for small, easily manufacturable optical systems. He covers alternative approaches to designing a digital optical computer and then shows in detail how to design regularity into digital optical circuits using simple methods that yield high performance without introducing significant complexity into the target machine. In the process, he points out the exciting potential offered by regular free-space interconnects, such as the possibility of completely reconfiguring the gate-to-gate interconnects of a computer on every time step.

Three case studies in design - a wideband digital switch, the Rutgers CAM, and Thinking Machine's CM-1 Connection Machine - illustrate Murdocca's approach.

Miles Murdocca is a Member of Technical Staff in the Optical Computing Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University.