Programmable optically reconfigurable gate array architecture and its writer

Abstract

Recently, optically reconfigurable gate arrays (ORGAs), which consist of a gate array VLSI, a holographic memory, and a laser array, have been developed to achieve huge virtual gate counts that vastly surpass those of currently available VLSIs. By exploiting the large storage capacity of a holographic memory, VLSIs with more than 1 teragate counts will be producible. However, compared with current field programmable gate arrays, conventional ORGAs have one important shortcoming: they cannot be reprogrammed after fabrication. To reprogram ORGAs, a holographic memory must be disassembled from its ORGA package, then reprogrammed outside of the ORGA package using a holographic memory writer. It must then be implemented onto the ORGA package with high precision techniques beyond that which can be provided by manual assembly. Therefore, to improve this shortcoming, this paper proposes what is believed to be the world's first programmable ORGA architecture with no disassembly. Finally, the availability of this architecture is discussed based on the experimental results.