<title>Digital optoelectronic computer for textual pattern matching</title>

Abstract

In this paper we propose a digital opto-electronic computer capable ofperforming a rich variety of full text search operations. Most of these operations require searching a significant number of documents to retrieve only a few pages. In the proposed configuration, textual data are stored on optical disks, retrieved in parallel, and processed on-the-fly by the optical computer. Only data that satisfy a particular query are converted into electronic signals and transferred to the end-user. A combination of two-dimensional spatial light modulators and photodetectors are used for array processing. In this way, the system takes full advantage of the speed and parallelism of digital optical technology. Finally, the implementation of a set of text processing operations is shown.