A simulator for general purpose optical arrays

Abstract

Architectures based on optical arrays offer the promise of massive parallelism and three-dimensional computing. The design of an integrated general purpose optical or electrooptical machine is a formidable task. The simulation of these technologies using electronic computers allows a number of designs for such machines to be explored. The general purpose simulator for electrooptical arrays presented demonstrates the practicality and presents the limitations of such technologies. The behavior of bi-level optically active gate and lens materials is simulated as solutions to well-known equations in a low level optical simulation. A second higher level optical simulation is used to simulate optical arrays at the gate level using modified ray tracing techniques. A third level provides a simulation of the electrooptical integration of an example array processor, and allows simulation of machine code for a minimal classical machine to be mapped onto an example array architecture.<>