Digital Optical Computing Research Articles

Programmable optical switching integrated chip for 4-bit binary true/inverse/complement code conversions based on fluorinated photopolymers.

In this work, programmable optical switching integrated chips for 4-bit binary true/inverse/complement optical code conversions (OCCs) are proposed based on fluorinated photopolymers. Fluorinated bis-phenol-A novolac resin (FAR) with low absorption loss and fluorinated polyacrylate (FPA) with high thermal stability are self-synthesized as core and cladding layer, respectively. The basic architecture of operating unit for the photonic chip designed is composed of directional coupler Mach-Zehnder interferometer (DC-MZI) thermo-optic (TO) switching, X-junction, and Y-bunching waveguide structures. The waveguide module by cascading 16 operating units could realize OCCs function through optical transmission matrix. The response time of the 4-bit binary OCCs is measured as about 300 µs. The insertion loss and extinction ratio of the actual chip are obtained as about 10.5 dB and 15.2 dB, respectively. The electric driving power consumption for OCCs is less than 6 mW. The true/inverse/complement OCCs are achieved by the programmable modulation circuit. The proposed technique is suitable for achieving optical digital computing system with high-speed signal processing and low power consumption.

Performing photonic nonlinear computations by linear operations in a high-dimensional space

Abstract As photonic linear computations are diverse and easy to realize while photonic nonlinear computations are relatively limited and difficult, we propose a novel way to perform photonic nonlinear computations by linear operations in a high-dimensional space, which can achieve many nonlinear functions different from existing optical methods. As a practical application, the arbitrary binary nonlinear computations between two Boolean signals are demonstrated to implement a programmable logic array. In the experiment, by programming the high-dimensional photonic matrix multiplier, we execute fourteen different logic operations with only one fixed nonlinear operation. Then the combined logic functions of half-adder and comparator are demonstrated at 10 Gbit/s. Compared with current methods, the proposed scheme simplifies the devices and the nonlinear operations for programmable logic computing. More importantly, nonlinear realization assisted by space transformation offers a new solution for optical digital computing and enriches the diversity of photonic nonlinear computing.

Optical Computing: Status and Perspectives.

For many years, optics has been employed in computing, although the major focus has been and remains to be on connecting parts of computers, for communications, or more fundamentally in systems that have some optical function or element (optical pattern recognition, etc.). Optical digital computers are still evolving; however, a variety of components that can eventually lead to true optical computers, such as optical logic gates, optical switches, neural networks, and spatial light modulators have previously been developed and are discussed in this paper. High-performance off-the-shelf computers can accurately simulate and construct more complicated photonic devices and systems. These advancements have developed under unusual circumstances: photonics is an emerging tool for the next generation of computing hardware, while recent advances in digital computers have empowered the design, modeling, and creation of a new class of photonic devices and systems with unparalleled challenges. Thus, the review of the status and perspectives shows that optical technology offers incredible developments in computational efficiency; however, only separately implemented optical operations are known so far, and the launch of the world’s first commercial optical processing system was only recently announced. Most likely, the optical computer has not been put into mass production because there are still no good solutions for optical transistors, optical memory, and much more that acceptance to break the huge inertia of many proven technologies in electronics.

Digital-optical computational imaging capable of end-point logic operations.

In this study, digital-optical computational imaging is proposed for object data transmission with a capability to achieve end-point logic operations over free-space data transmission. The framework is regarded as an extension of computational imaging using digital-optical codes originally developed for digital optical computing. Spatial code patterns for optical logic operations are extended to digital-optical codes in the temporal and spectral domains. The physical form of the digital-optical codes is selected, as appropriate, for the situation in use, and different forms can be combined to increase the data-transmission bandwidth. The encoded signals are transferred over free space and decoded by a simple procedure on the destination device, thus enabling logic operations at the end-point of the data transmission. To utilize the benefits of digital processing, a data-transfer mode is introduced which assigns preprocessing for the signals to be encoded and the end-point processing. As a demonstration of the proposed method, an experimental testbed was constructed assuming data transmission from sensor nodes to a gateway device appearing in the Internet of Things. In the experiment, encrypted signals of the sensor nodes, which were encoded by spatial digital-optical codes on RGB channels, were captured as an image, and the original signals were retrieved correctly by an end-point exclusive OR operation.

Orbital angular momentum mode logical operation using optical diffractive neural network

Optical logical operations demonstrate the key role of optical digital computing, which can perform general-purpose calculations and possess fast processing speed, low crosstalk, and high throughput. The logic states usually refer to linear momentums that are distinguished by intensity distributions, which blur the discrimination boundary and limit its sustainable applications. Here, we introduce orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode logical operations performed by optical diffractive neural networks (ODNNs). Using the OAM mode as a logic state not only can improve the parallel processing ability but also enhance the logic distinction and robustness of logical gates owing to the mode infinity and orthogonality. ODNN combining scalar diffraction theory and deep learning technology is designed to independently manipulate the mode and spatial position of multiple OAM modes, which allows for complex multilight modulation functions to respond to logic inputs. We show that few-layer ODNNs successfully implement the logical operations of AND, OR, NOT, NAND, and NOR in simulations. The logic units of XNOR and XOR are obtained by cascading the basic logical gates of AND, OR, and NOT, which can further constitute logical half-adder gates. Our demonstrations may provide a new avenue for optical logical operations and are expected to promote the practical application of optical digital computing.

Optical information processing: A historical overview

Optical information processing lies at the intersection of optics and signal processing. It involves the processing of optical information as well as the use of optical means to process information, the later being the main emphasis of this work. A historical review of various forms of optical signal processing and holography, optoelectronic and digital optical computing, and optical interconnections is given.

Localization of Light in Photonics Lattices for All-Optical Representation of Binaries

In this paper we present a novel conceptual method for all optical representation of binary numbers that could be used for all-optical binary logic components in optical digital computing, as well as for other applications. The new concept is based on effect of localization of light in specially designed binary photonics lattices whose central parts resemble the represented binaries, and the localizations occur due to breaking periodicities of the lattices. The proposed structures can be made with integrated photonics on-chip that are highly programmable and controllable. Most significantly, the working principle of the novel method doesn’t require nonlinear interaction between light and material, which is the most serious obstacle in the conventional method that uses optical transistors whose mechanism relies mainly on optical nonlinearity. We will discuss some technical challenges in developing the components.

Analogy of transistor function with modulating photonic band gap in electromagnetically induced grating.

Optical transistor is a device used to amplify and switch optical signals. Many researchers focus on replacing current computer components with optical equivalents, resulting in an optical digital computer system processing binary data. Electronic transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices. To replace electronic components with optical ones, an equivalent optical transistor is required. Here we compare the behavior of an optical transistor with the reflection from a photonic band gap structure in an electromagnetically induced transparency medium. A control signal is used to modulate the photonic band gap structure. Power variation of the control signal is used to provide an analogy between the reflection behavior caused by modulating the photonic band gap structure and the shifting of Q-point (Operation point) as well as amplification function of optical transistor. By means of the control signal, the switching function of optical transistor has also been realized. Such experimental schemes could have potential applications in making optical diode and optical transistor used in quantum information processing.

Cavity enhanced nonlinear optics for few photon optical bistability.

Weak material nonlinearity at optical frequencies poses a serious hurdle to realizing optical bistability at low optical powers, which is a critical component for digital optical computing. In this paper, we explore the cavity enhancement of the second-order optical nonlinearity in order to determine the feasibility of few photon optical bistability. Starting from a quantum optical formalism of a doubly resonant cavity (required to meet the condition of phase matching), we derive a dynamic classical model of a cavity that is bistable at the fundamental mode. We analyze the optical energy and the switching speed as a function of the cavity quality factors and mode volumes and identify the regime where only ten's of photons are required to perform the switching. An unusual trend in the switching speed is also observed, where the speed monotonically decreases as the cavity linewidth increases. This is ascribed to the increase in the switching gain with increasing cavity linewidth.

Controlling quantum-dot light absorption and emission by a surface-plasmon field.

The possibility for controlling both the probe-field optical gain and absorption, as well as photon conversion by a surface-plasmon-polariton near field is explored for a quantum dot located above a metal surface. In contrast to the linear response in the weak-coupling regime, the calculated spectra show an induced optical gain and a triply-split spontaneous emission peak resulting from the interference between the surface-plasmon field and the probe or self-emitted light field in such a strongly-coupled nonlinear system. Our result on the control of the mediated photon-photon interaction, very similar to the 'gate' control in an optical transistor, may be experimentally observable and applied to ultra-fast intrachip/interchip optical interconnects, improvement in the performance of fiber-optic communication networks, and developments of optical digital computers and quantum communications.

Cavity-enabled self-electro-optic bistability in silicon photonics.

We propose a new type of bistable device for silicon photonics, using the self-electro-optic effect within an optical cavity. Since the bistability does not depend on the intrinsic optical nonlinearity of the material, but is instead engineered by means of optoelectronic feedback, it appears at low optical powers. This bistable device satisfies all the basic criteria required in an optical switch to build a scalable digital optical computing system.

Design of a reversible single precision floating point subtractor

In recent years, Reversible logic has emerged as a major area of research due to its ability to reduce the power dissipation which is the main requirement in the low power digital circuit design. It has wide applications like low power CMOS design, Nano-technology, Digital signal processing, Communication, DNA computing and Optical computing. Floating-point operations are needed very frequently in nearly all computing disciplines, and studies have shown floating-point addition/subtraction to be the most used floating-point operation. However, few designs exist on efficient reversible BCD subtractors but no work on reversible floating point subtractor. In this paper, it is proposed to present an efficient reversible single precision floating-point subtractor. The proposed design requires reversible designs of an 8-bit and a 24-bit comparator unit, an 8-bit and a 24-bit subtractor, and a normalization unit. For normalization, a 24-bit Reversible Leading Zero Detector and a 24-bit reversible shift register is implemented to shift the mantissas. To realize a reversible 1-bit comparator, in this paper, two new 3x3 reversible gates are proposed The proposed reversible 1-bit comparator is better and optimized in terms of the number of reversible gates used, the number of transistor count and the number of garbage outputs. The proposed work is analysed in terms of number of reversible gates, garbage outputs, constant inputs and quantum costs. Using these modules, an efficient design of a reversible single precision floating point subtractor is proposed. Proposed circuits have been simulated using Modelsim and synthesized using Xilinx Virtex5vlx30tff665-3. The total on-chip power consumed by the proposed 32-bit reversible floating point subtractor is 0.410 W.

Semantic Network-based Digital Optical Computer Algorithms for Expert Systems and Massively Parallel Knowledge Base Applications

Semantic Network-based Digital Optical Computer Algorithms for Expert Systems and Massively Parallel Knowledge Base Applications

All optical alternative approach of conducting NAND and NOR logic gates with phase encoding principle

All optical logic gates are the most important building blocks for conducting all optical digital and analog signal processing and computing. It has several uses in the high speed communication system. In last few years various non-linear properties of semiconductor optical amplifier have been utilized for realization of all optical logic gates exploiting different type's optical modulations. In such connection optical phase encoding technique drew more attention in last few years as it shows higher receiver sensitivity and extended tolerance limit in long-haul fiber transmission systems. In this communication the authors have proposed an alternative approach for conducting all optical logic gates with phase encoded inputs by the exploitation of the four wave mixing (FWM) property in semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA).

Circuit designs of ultra-fast all-optical modified signed-digit adders using semiconductor optical amplifier and Mach–Zehnder interferometer

The need for increasingly high-speed digital optical systems and optical processors demands ultra-fast all-optical logic and arithmetic units. In this paper, we combine the attractive and powerful parallelism property of the modified signed-digit (MSD) number representation with the ultra-fast all-optical switching property of the semiconductor optical amplifier and Mach–Zehnder interferometer (SOA–MZI) to design and implement all-optical MSD adder/subtracter circuits. Non-minimized and minimized techniques are presented to design and realize efficient circuits to perform arithmetic operations. Several all-optical circuits’ designs are proposed with the objective to minimize the number of the SOA–MZI switches, the time delay units in the adders, and other optical elements. To use the switching property of the SOA–MZI structure, two bits per digit binary encoding for each of the trinary MSD digits are used. The proposed optical circuits will be very helpful in developing hardware modules for optical digital computing processors.

Photonic Implementation of Quantum Computation Algorithm Based on Spatial Coding

Several implementation methods of quantum computation algorithm by conventional computer have been explored for large-scale emulation. Due to the lack of quantum effects, these methods generally require exponential growth of the size of the hardware with increase of the number of qubits. In this paper, the spatial coding, which is an effective digital optical computing technique, is studied as an efficient implementation method of quantum computation algorithms. In the proposed scheme, quantum information is represented by the intensity and the phase of elemental cells. We confirmed correct operation of the quantum teleportation algorithm by computer simulation. We also demonstrated a photonic implementation of some of the quantum gates experimentally.

Non-quantum implementation of quantum computation algorithm using a spatial coding technique

Non-quantum implementation of quantum information processing is studied. A spatial coding technique, which is one effective digital optical computing technique, is utilized to implement quantum teleportation efficiently. In the coding, quantum information is represented by the intensity and the phase of elemental cells. Correct operation is confirmed within the proposed scheme, which indicates the effectiveness of the proposed approach and a motive for further investigation.

Array illuminator based on self-imaging in white light

An array illuminator is a device/optical system that splits an incoming beam of light into an array of many light spots/beams. It is useful in logic systems and in optical digital computing or in switching systems to energize arrays of components such as logic gates, optically bistable devices and electro-optic modulators. Array illuminators working in white light are interesting because they do not suffer from coherent noise and yield better signal-to-noise ratio. We propose configurations for array illuminator based on Fresnel diffraction and working under white light illumination conditions. Performance evaluation of the illuminators is also undertaken and the results of investigation are reported.

Two-dimensional arrangement of spatial patterns representing numerical data in input images for effective use of hardware resources in digital optical computing system based on optical array logic

The authors have proposed a parallel optical computation technique making effective use of available hardware resources without decreasing the processing efficiency in optical array logic (OAL), a paradigm for parallel digital optical computing allowing arbitrary neighborhood logical operations. No methodology for effectively arranging numerical data in the input image in digital optical computing has been reported, and so the parallel algorithms in OAL proposed in past studies required large-scale hardware for their implementation. The proposed technique segments the data to be processed and regularly arranges them in several rows in the input images. The validity of the technique has been demonstrated by applying it to two parallel operations. The authors have verified the advantages of the proposed technique in terms of processing efficiency compared to the conventional technique.

Performance Comparison and Evaluation of Options for Arranging Data in Digital Optical Parallel Computing

Performances of options for arranging data in the input images of digital optical computing are analyzed and evaluated on the basis of the characteristic functions that the authors formularized. The methods for arranging the data are classified into two options: the spatially expanded bit-pattern arrangement (SEPA) and the bit-slice arrangement (BSA). To analyze and evaluate the performance, the options are applied to the parallel operations based on the optical array logic that is a paradigm of digital parallel computing. Processing steps, storage capacity, and scale of the operation kernel required for performing various parallel operations are analyzed as the characteristic functions. The performances of the SEPA and the BSA are evaluated by comparing these functions. The features of each option are clarified and a guideline for choosing the optimal option is proposed to efficiently perform digital parallel optical operations.