How large can a coherent acousto-optic matrix-vector multiplier be constructed?
Departmental seminar, 12 February 2001
Tom Naughton, Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth, Ireland
Abstract. A number of important research efforts have quantified the errors associated with various analog optical processors, including acousto-optic (AO) algebra processors. These analyses have looked at AO cell characteristics such as frequency response and acoustic attenuation, addressed overheads associated with digital numbering systems, and employed statistical noise models to quantify errors.
We characterise the bounds on numerical accuracy that a finite acoustic beam height will have on an analog AO algebra processor that uses coherent illumination. For a fixed acoustic beam height we also quantify how much inter-row unused spacing must be added to the matrix SLM (spatial light modulator) as its resolution is increased. We determine to what degree this impedes scaling of the architecture.
We find that for a fixed acoustic beam height, any space-bandwidth product gains obtained by increasing the resolution of the matrix SLM will be lost through the requirement for additional inter-row spacing to preserve numerical accuracy. A Fourier optical model of our physical matrix-vector multiplier is used as a basis for the simulations.