Nonlinear Optical Associative Memories

Abstract

The justification for developing optical computers is based on the assertion that optics is capable of performing better than electronics in some respects. Furthermore, the areas in which optics can outperform electronics must represent critical limitations preventing electronic computers from providing reasonable solutions to a broad class of problems of interest. Parallel processing capability is certainly a desirable property of optics, however its importance as an advantageous feature compared to electronics has been perhaps overemphasized, since there is no fundamental limitation to the degree of parallelism that can be achieved electronically. Already there are projects in progress to implement electronic systems with hundreds of thousands of electronic parallel processing elements. Global communication capability on the other hand is a property of optics that is clearly very difficult to duplicate electronically. One of the reasons that optics can provide global communication is the fact that optical systems are configurable in three dimensions. For instance optics can be used to optically interconnect a large number of processing units in a plane with light propagating in the third dimension and the interconnection pattern itself being specified externally to the plane of the processors.