Key issues in implementing an optoelectronic planar free-space architecture for signal processing applications

Paper in proceeding, 2003

In this paper, we deal with the key issues in implementing an optoelectronic architecture suitable for embedded signal processing. The architecture is based on a system concept where free-space optical interconnects and planar packaging technologies make it possible to merge complicated and new parallel computer architectures into planes and to take advantage of many properties of optics. For instance, optical fan-out reduces the hardware cost as well as the all-to-all broadcast time. It is also possible to meet scalability and high bisection bandwidth requirements. The main results show that it is possible to build a 6D hypercube using planar optical substrates.