Yasuhiro AWATSUJI,¹ Nobuyuki SAKAMOTO² Hidetoshi UTSURO,¹ Jun TANIDA² and Yoshiki ICHIOKA²

¹Department of Applied Physics, ²Department of Material and Life Science, Faculty of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1, Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565 Japan

(Received September 5, 1996; Accepted November 14, 1996)

We present the architecture of novel optoelectronic parallel computing called optical array logic network computing (OAL-NC). In the OAL-NC, electronic processing elements execute local operations, whereas an optical network processor is dedicated to global operations as well as data transfer. As a prototype of the OAL-NC, a 16×6 pixel system is designed at a logical level. Issues associated with the design task are discussed.

Key words : parallel processing, optical computing, optical array logic, system design, heterogeneous processing