Optically connected parallel machine: design, performance and application

Author

White, H.J. ; Barrett, C.P. ; Birch, M.J. ; Brocklehurst, J.R. ; Brownjohn, N.A. ; Crossland, W.A. ; Davey, A.B. ; Monro, D.M. ; Neilson, D.T. ; Nicholls, J.A. ; Proudley, G.M. ; Robertson, B. ; Scarr, R.W.A. ; Snook, M. ; Stace, C. ; Taghizadeh, M.R. ; V

Author_Institution

Dept. of Opt. & Laser Technol., Sowerby Res. Centre, Bristol, UK

Volume

146

Issue

3

fYear

1999

fDate

6/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

125

Lastpage

136

Abstract

A free-space optical 64×64 fibre-to-fibre crossbar switch with spatial light modulators as the crosspoint elements is described. The design and performance of the optical and electrical components is discussed including lenses, diffraction gratings, polarising beam splitters, fibre mountings, baseplate construction, ferroelectric liquid-crystal spatial light modulators with their VLSI drive circuits and transceivers. A control system is proposed and a number of applications including avionics and computing are described. A demonstration model has been built and its performance is reported

Keywords

avionics; diffraction gratings; diffractive optical elements; optical backplanes; optical computing; optical fibre communication; parallel architectures; photonic switching systems; pipeline processing; reduced instruction set computing; spatial light modulators; RISC interconnection; VLSI drive circuits; avionics; backplane design; baseplate construction; control system; crossconnects; crosspoint elements; demonstration model; diffraction gratings; diffractive optical elements; fan-in element; fan-out element; ferroelectric liquid-crystal SLM; fibre mountings; fibre-to-fibre crossbar switch; free-space optical switch; optical design; optically connected parallel machine; performance; pipeline configuration; polarising beam splitters; processor architecture; relay lenses; spatial light modulators; transceivers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Optoelectronics, IEE Proceedings -

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1350-2433

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/ip-opt:19990511

Filename

806204