SHARED-MEMORY OPTICAL ELECTRONIC-COMPUTER - ARCHITECTURE AND CONTROL

The design of a parallel digital computer architecture, the shared-mem ory optical/electronic computer (SMOEC), and its associated control al gorithms are presented. The design is based on the shared-memory model of computation and incorporates an optical interconnection network as an essential element. The arthitecture consists of a novel passive op tical shuffle-exchange network, which is detailed in another paper [Ap pl. Opt. 33, (1994)], that interconnects electronic processing element s with electronic memory modules and incorporates network control. Imp roved capability of this optical-electronic multiple-instruction multi ple-data (MIMD) architecture over fully electronic implementations ste ms from the reduced complexity inherent in the optical interconnection network and the resulting memory access capability. In this system th e simultaneous development of three main design facets, architecture, hardware, and control algorithms, is crucial in designing an efficient high-performance system.