Optical parallel database management system for page oriented holographic memories

Current data recall rates from page oriented holographic memories far excee d the ability of electronics to even read or transmit the data. For databas e management, we must not only read those data but also query them-computat ionally, a far more complex task. That task is very severe for electronics. We show here the rudiments of an optical system that can do most of the qu ery operations in parallel in optics, leaving the burden for electronics si gnificantly less. Even here, electronics is the ultimate speed limiter. Nev ertheless, we can query data far faster in our optical/ electronic system t han any purely electronic system. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.