A Multi-Wavelength Optical COntent-Addressable Parallel processor for high-Speed Parallel Relational Database processing: Architectural COncepts and preliminary Experimental System

摘要

This paper presents a novel architecture for parllel database processing called Multi-Wavelength optical COntent Addressable Parallel Porcessor. MW-OCAPP is designed to provide efficient parallel retrieval and processing of data by moving the bulk of database operations fro melectronics to optics. It ocmbines a paralel model of computation with the many degrees foprocessing freedom that light provides. MW-OCAPP uses a polarization and wavelength-encoding scheme to achieve a high level of parallelism. DIstinctive features of the proposed architecture include(1) the use of a multiple-wavelength encoding shceme to enhance processing parallelism, (2) multiple-comparand work-parallel and bit-parallel magnitude comparsison with an execution-time independent of the data size or work size, (3) the implementatio of a sutie of eleven database primitives, and (4) multi-comparand two-dimensioal data processing. The MW-OCAPP architecture realizes eleven relatioal database primitives: difference, intersection ,union, conditional selection, maximum, minimum, join, product, projection, division and update. Most of these operatons execute in constant time independent of the data size. This paper outlines the architeecutural concepts and motivation behind MW-OCAPP's design, as well as describs the architecture required for implementing the equality and magintude comparsion processing cores. Additionally, a physical demonstration of the multiwavelength equality operation is presented.