All-optical quaternary computing and information processing: a promising path

摘要

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology has revolutionized the electronics industry and established the 20th century as the computer age. But, an alternative technological solution to the problem of high speed computing is needed, and unless we gear our thoughts toward a totally different pathway, we will not be able to further improve our information processing performance for the future. The Multi-valued logic (MVL) is positioned as a coming generation technology that can execute arithmetic functions faster and with less interconnect than binary logic. All-optical quaternary computing, based on radix-4 number system, may be the next generation computing system. In this paper we have tried to give an outline of quaternary logic based information processing schemes where future research can be explored. We have also shown the probable programmable logic device in quaternary optical computer.