POCA - Programmable Optoelectronic Computer Architectures

Project Objectives

(i) To design, and investigate through simulation based on real-life device parameters including the interface between optical and electronic system components.

(ii) In particular, to introduce an intermediate fine-grain parallel computation layer, based upon and developing the emergent area of optical field programmable array technology.

(iii) To investigate techniques for developing novel parallelised algorithms that have high-level descriptions of computational solutions, but with lower-level implementations that use the new architecture efficiently and flexibility.

To demonstrate the benefits of the new architecture through usage in two distinct application areas: loosely coupled optical input/output to/from a communications hub, and closely coupled optical input/output to/from an image processor performing functions of use in aeronautical applications.

Project Status: Started November 2002.

Information Photonics

Abstract: The use of photonic means to transfer information has been long established for good physical reasons. At the present time more photonic components are penetrating information technologies with more set to come. Recent successes with DWDM, fast network systems, sensor systems and intra-machine connections indicate that the trend is likely to continue despite market scepticism in the wake of the bursting of the “telecomms bubble”. In this paper I shall review the likely candidates for market in the medium (4 to 10 yrs) to long term (10 to ¥ yrs) timescales and attempt to describe some of the more exciting research projects from both the industrial and academic points of view. Since reconfigurable architectures offer a great deal to photonics in providing a flexible interface to the microelectronic world and photonics has the potential to provide very high data throughputs and very low latencies to reconfigurable components, it seems expedient to examine how the two may be combined. I shall describe several possibilities from system to component level utilising both novel and existing device technologies.

J. F. Snowdon, K. J. Symington and G. Brebner, "Information Photonics", Seminar Number 03301, Dynamically Reconfigurable Architectures, Schloss Dagstuhl, July 2003.

Download the talk given in PDF format (2.9MB).

Last Modified 29/07/03 14:38:20.