Yoshio HAYASAKI,¹ Masahiko MORI,² Toyohiko YATAGAI³ and Nobuo NISHIDA¹

¹Department of Optical Science and Technology, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokushima, 2-1, Minamijosanjima-cho, Tokushima, 770 Japan, ²Optical Information Section, Electrotechnical Laboratory, 1-1-4, Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305 Japan, ³Institute of Applied Physics, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1, Tennoudai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305 Japan

(Received August 5, 1996; Accepted January 10, 1997)

A time-domain encoding method (temporal method) for space-variant parallel logic operations, which can execute different operations in parallel, is proposed. The temporal method is based on temporal encoding of two input patterns, temporal gating of the coded pattern, and decoding by temporal addition of the gated patterns. The first feature of the proposed method is that parallel logic operations can be performed without complex pattern transformations. The second feature is that the logical output can be directly fed to succeeding systems without specific decoding. Therefore, the logic operation system can be constructed using conventional optics and existing spatial light modulators. In order to confirm these features, an optoelectronic experimental system is constructed and space-variant parallel logic operations are performed.

Key words : optical computing, optical parallel processing, parallel logic operations, space-variant, spatial light modulator