Optical Thyristor Based Subsystems for Digital Parallel Processing: Demonstrators and Future Perspectives

摘要

In this paper we study the practical implementation of arrays of differential pairs of optical thy ris tors in systems and demonstrate some basic functionalities as a first step towards the construction of a primitive digital parallel optical processor. We demonstrate element to element digital optical data transcription between single elements at 0.5 MHz- This is a lower data rate than the 50 MHz demonstrated for transcription between neighbouring elements on a single wafer but is due to the fact that we employ an optical system which allows plane to plane imaging with a wider field of view but lower efficiency. This allows us to demonstrate transcription between 8x8 arrays of elements with a channel data rate of 50 kHz. By using a compact optical system which combines large diameter GRIN lenses with Fourier plane diffractive optics we are able to implement a system with three cascaded thyristor stages with an element to array fan-out of 3. Moreover we demonstrate digital optical logic NAND, NOR, AND and OR operations at a speed of 160 kHz. Finally we investigate system scalability.