A lens-less imaging holographic memory writer system for a programmable optically reconfigurable gate array

Abstract

Recently, optically reconfigurable gate arrays (ORGAs) consisting of a gate array VLSI, a holographic memory, and a laser array have been developed to achieve a huge virtual gate count that is much larger than those of currently available VLSIs. Consequently, ORGAs with more than tera-gate capacity will be realized by exploiting the storage capacity of a holographic memory. However, in contrast to current field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), conventional ORGAs have an important shortcoming: they are not reprogrammable after fabrication because, to reprogram ORGAs, a holographic memory must be disassembled from its ORGA package and reprogrammed outside of the ORGA package using a holographic memory writer. Then it must be implemented onto the ORGA package with high precision beyond the capability of manual assembly. To remove that problem, this paper presents a new programmable optically reconfigurable gate array and its lens-less imaging holographic memory writer system. Furthermore, this paper presents discussion of the availability of this architecture and future plans based on experimental results.