Opto Eelctronics

Research on:

Optical processing

Submitted to:

                   Dr: Tamer Abdelrahman 
By:

                    Karim Mohamed Abdelkader Mustafa. 
ID#074171 
Table of content:

• Abstract……………………………………………………….

• Introduction ………………………………………………….1

• Optical computing…………………………………………...2

• Israeli ship eight tera-ops optical processor……………3

• Optical processing & news………………………………….4

• Ultra fast coherent optical signal processing…………….6

• The Dawing of light transistor………………………………8

• Optical Development Boom is world wide……………….25

• References ……………………………………………………28

Optical processing 1
Abstract:

Watches tick in seconds. Basketball games are timed in 10ths

of a second, and drag racers in 100ths. Computers used to work
in milliseconds (1,000ths), then moved up to microseconds
(millionths), and now are approaching nanoseconds (billionths)
for logic operations - and picoseconds (trillionths!) for the
switches
and gates in chips "That's great in theory," says Dr. Donald
Frazier of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Except that
electronic signals, even with Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)
and maximum miniaturization, are bogged down by many
aspects of the solid materials they travel through. So we've had to
find a faster medium for the signals - and the answer seems to be

Light it self!"

Dr. Donald Frazier

Optical processing 2
Introduction:

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That's 982,080,000 feet per
second -- or 11,784,960,000 inches. In a billionth of a second, one
nanosecond, photons of light travel just a bit less than a foot, not considering
resistance in air or of an optical fiber strand or thin film. Just right for doing
things very quickly in microminiaturized computer chips.

"Entirely optical computers are still some time in the future," says Dr. Frazier,
"but electro-optical hybrids have been possible since 1978, when it was
learned that photons can respond to electrons through media such as lithium
niobate. Newer advances have produced a variety of thin films and optical
fibers that make optical interconnections and devices practical. We are
focusing on thin films made of organic molecules, which are more light
sensitive than inorganics. Organics can perform functions such as switching,
signal processing and frequency doubling using less power than inorganics.
Inorganics such as silicon used with organic materials let us use both photons
and electrons in current hybrid systems, which will eventually lead to all-
optical computer systems."

Optical processing 3
Optical computing:

An optical computer (also called a photonic computer) is a device

that uses the photons of visible light or infrared (IR) beams, rather than
electric current, to perform digital computations. An electric current creates
heat in computer systems. As the processing speed increases, so does the
amount of electricity required; this extra heat is extremely damaging to the
hardware. Light, however, creates insignificant amounts of heat, regardless of
how much is used. Thus, the development of more powerful processing
systems becomes possible. By applying some of the advantages of visible
and/or IR networks at the device and component scale, a computer might
someday be developed that can perform operations significantly faster than a
conventional electronic computer.

Visible-light and IR beams, unlike electric currents, pass through each other
without interacting. Several laser beams can be shone so their paths intersect,
but there is no interference among the beams, even when they are confined
essentially to two dimensions. Electric currents must be guided around each
other, and this makes three-dimensional wiring necessary. Thus, an optical
computer, besides being much faster than an electronic one, might also be
smaller.

Most research projects focus on replacing current computer components with

optical equivalents, resulting in an optical digital computer system processing
binary data. This approach appears to offer the best short-term prospects for
commercial optical computing, since optical components could be integrated
into traditional computers to produce an optical/electronic hybrid. Other
research projects take a non-traditional approach, attempting to develop
entirely new methods of computing that are not physically possible
with electronics.

Optical processing 4
Israelis ship eight tera-ops optical processor:

Israeli technology Lenslet has begun shipping what it claims is the world's
first optical microprocessor.

We should point out that we're not talking a Pentium or G5 here. Instead, the
EnLight 256 is a DSP chip designed to perform a series of simple operations
rather than provide a basis for general purpose processing.

However, its use of light rather than electronics enables it to perform up to

eight trillion calculations per second - roughly a thousand times faster than
semiconductor DSPs, the company claims.

EnLight comprises an eight trillion ops per second vector-matrix engine, a 128
billion ops per second vector processing unit and a standard semiconductor
DSP licensed from Texas Instruments for scalar processing and chip control.

It's the vector-matrix maths unit - called the Ablaze core - that uses optical
processing technology. The optical engine - or Spatial Light Modulator (SLM),
as Lenset calls it - is... well... here's how Lenset describes it: "A two
dimensional 8-bit resolution, reflective mode intensity modulator." It operates
using "advanced Multiple Quantum Well (MQW) [Gallium Arsenide]
technology".

Essentially, it performs vector-matrix multiplication by firing 256 tiny

"vertical cavity surface emitting" lasers into the SLM's "programmable
internal optics". The beams interfere yielding a series of outputs that are 'read'
by an array of 256 light detectors and converted back to electronic
information. The chip is fast because it allows many calculations to be made in
parallel.

According to Lenslet, Ablaze can operate as a standalone device. The company

reckons it has a role in a number of information processing and
communications applications, including high capacity data storage, high
bandwidth I/O in CMOS chips and others. As part of EnLight, its role
broadens to take in high definition video encoding - such as H.264
compression for multiple HDTV channels - and unnamed "military and

Optical processing 5
industrial" applications, but mostly military, we note from the tone of the
company's web site.

Lenslet sees system designers replacing multi-DSP set-ups with single

EnLight 256 chips. Not that it comes cheaply: the part is expected to cost tens
of thousands of dollars a pop, with each chip designed to order.

Optical processing & news:

New processor computes at light speed(CNN)

HERZLIYA, Israel (Reuters) -- An Israeli start-up has developed a

processor that uses optics instead of silicon, enabling it to compute
at the speed of light, the company said.

Lenslet said its processor will enable new capabilities in homeland security
and military, multimedia and communications applications.

"Optical processing is a strategic competitive advantage for nations and

companies," said Avner Halperin, vice president for business development at
Lenslet.

"Processing at the speed of light, you can have safer airports, autonomous
military systems, high-definition multimedia broadcast systems and advanced
next-generation communications systems."

An optical processor is a digital signal processor (DSP) with an optical

accelerator attached to it that enables it to perform functions at very high
speeds.

"It is an acceleration of 20 years in the development of digital hardware,"

Lenslet founder and Chief Executive Officer Aviram Sariel said.

The processor performs 8 trillion operations per second, equivalent to a

super-computer and 1,000 times faster than standard processors, with 256
lasers performing computations at light speed.

It is geared towards such applications as high resolution radar, electronic

warfare, luggage screening at airports, video compression, weather forecasting
and cellular base stations.

Optical processing 6
Lenslet said its Enlight processor, unveiled at the MILCOM exhibition in
Boston this month, is the first commercially available optical DSP.

Jim Tully, vice president and chief of research for semiconductors and
emerging technologies at Gartner Inc, said most companies working with
optics focus on switching optical signals for telecommunications rather than
processing information optically.

"I'm not aware of any company that has taken it to the extent of processing
optically," he said.

Lenslet has raised $27.5 million so far from such investors as Goldman Sachs,
Walden VC, Germany's Star Ventures and Chicago-based JK&B Capital.

Shrinking it down

The company's prototype is fairly large and bulky but when Lenslet begins to
supply the processor in a few months it will be shrunk to 15 x 15 cm with a
height of 1.7 cm, roughly the size of a Palm Pilot.

"In five years we plan to shrink it to a single chip," project manager Asaf
Schlezinger said.

Tully said one issue is whether this technology can be produced in volume the
way silicon chips are made.

"Because semiconductor manufacturing technology is well developed, you can

produce millions at quite low cost," said Tully, who is not familiar with
Enlight.

Lenslet said its processor will be competitive in price with a multi DSP board.

Negotiating deals

Sariel is negotiating joint projects with companies and/or government

agencies in the United States, Europe and Japan to produce the processor for
specific applications. It already has projects signed with Israel's Defense
Ministry.

"We don't rule out licensing our technology to others," Sariel said. "We are
looking at a virtual production line where production is done by others and we
provide testing equipment."

Optical processing 7
Tully said semiconductor companies are working on technology that would
use optical channels inside a chip to allow very high speed communication
from one part of a chip to another.

"It's conceivable this technology could become mainstream inside chips in 10

years time," Tully said.

Ultra fast Coherent Optical Signal Processing

In spite of tremendous advances in optical communications, the methods

most often used to encode and decode data on an optical carrier remain
primitive: most systems still rely only on the presence or absence of an optical
pulse to represent a binary "1" or "0" without controlling the phase or
frequency of the optical signal. The prevailing strategy for increasing the data
capacity has been to simply add more wavelength channels, or (to a lesser
extent) to increase the speed of each channel. Coherent optical
communication opens the possibility of communicating more efficiently by
utilizing both the amplitude and phase of the optical signal to convey
information.

Unfortunately, even with coherent modulation formats that transmit multiple

bits per symbol, the symbol rate is still limited by the speed of electronic
receiver circuits.

One recent approach to coherent optical detection is to replace the local

oscillator with a train of ultra short optical pulses. These optical pulses can
serve as gating pulses for the coherent detection in much the same way that
short electrical pulses are used in a sampling oscilloscope. The temporal
resolution of such a system is determined not by the electronic speed by
instead by the optical pulse width, which can be an order of magnitude shorter
than the fastest electrical pulses.

Most existing techniques for optical gating rely on nonlinear optical

processes such as sum-frequency generation, two-photon absorption, or four-
wave mixing to produce an intensity cross-correlation between the two optical
signals. At least two companies now sell commercial products that are capable
of recording optical signals as fast as 320 Gb/s by using short-pulses and non-

Optical processing 8
linear optical sampling. One key shortcoming of nonlinear techniques is that
they require a significant optical power in order to achieve a measurable
nonlinear interaction. For this reason, nonlinear optical sampling systems are
not very useful for measuring extremely weak optical signals. Furthermore,
nonlinear processes like two-photon absorption or sum-frequency generation
yield no information about the phase of the optical signal, hence they can only
be used to diagnose amplitude-modulated signals.

The idea of using coherent linear techniques for ultra fast signal
characterization was demonstrated only recently by C. Dorrer and others at
Lucent Technologies, who showed that by using phase-diversity coherent
optical detection it is possible to optically sample on-off-keyed optical signals
as fast as 640 Gb/s and phase-shift-keyed signals up to 40 Gb/s. In the few
implementations reported so far, the optical sampling pulses were produced
at low rates (below 100 MHz) from a passively-modelocked fiber laser that is
not synchronized or phase-locked to the data. Because the fiber laser and data
source are not phase-locked, this system requires off-line computation to
subtract out any relative phase drift between the signal and LO.

Fig. 1. (a) Optical spectrum of a coherent system in which the local oscillator is replaced with a
short-pulse laser. The broad spectrum of the laser overlaps with the signal to be sampled. (b)
The signal and local oscillator are mixed in a optical hybrid. Because the Hybrid detector uses
balanced detection, a non-zero output signal can be produced only if both signal and LO inputs
are present. The ultrafast optical pulses therefore act as a gating signal for the coherent
detection. (c) The resulting electrical signals I(t) and Q(t) each contain an electrical pulse whose
height is proportional to the instantaneous in-phase and quadrature components of the signal at
the sampling instant.

Optical processing 9
The scopes of potential applications for this technique could be greatly
expanded if one were to instead use ultrashort pulses that are synchronized
and phase-locked with the data signal to be diagnosed. Under these
conditions, one can imagine for example using coherent ultrafast detection to
extract a 10 Gb/s tributary data stream from a 400 Gb/s optically encoded
QPSK signal.

The Dawning of the Light Transistor

Forty years ago vacuum tube computers produced more heat than work,
and were slower than an sixth-grader on a slide rule. Yet, they laid the ground
work for the invention that topped off the 1940’s … AT&T’s tiny transistor.
Who could have visualized the revolution that was about to take place? Now
we are into the 90’s, maybe rethinking certain assumptions is in order. I’d like
to describe the photonic transistor (patent #5,093,802), a project that I feel
may be a very important piece of technology.

What is a “photonic transistor?” It is a transistor that uses light instead of

electricity. “Oh, solar?” No! I said light instead of electricity! “Ah! It must be
one of those Self-electro-optic Effect Devices reported in the press
recently…right?” Nope! No electro anything, just light. No electrons at all.
Photons, the basic substance of light, do the work in photonic transistors, not
electrons.

Why convert to light? Won’t electronic performance just continue improving?

No, again. Technology is reaching the end of its rope with electrons. Given the
newest methods of atomic scale manufacturing, the basic physics of the
electron places restrictions on electron speed and functionality within a
semiconductor. Yet the demand for increased computing power grows daily.

Photons are faster than electrons and can carry more information, easier.
That’s why the phone companies are switching from copper wire to optical
fiber. However, no one has built a practical device that makes one light beam
switch another light beam on and off, a process similar to the one used by

Optical processing 10
electrons do in a conventional transistor–that is, until now. So, why do
photons work better than electrons, and how do photonic transistors cure the
problem?

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH ELECTRONS?

Faster! Less money! Unfortunately this trend is true for computers and not for
sports cars. An ever-growing demand for faster, yet economical
communications exists. However, trying to process reams information in a
supercomputer is like trying to get thousands of commuters to work on time.
The faster we get the drivers to work, the quicker the work gets done.

Electrons inside a computer chip are not like race cars merrily zipping around
Daytona Speedway. They’re more a kin to traffic on the Los Angeles freeway–
backed up, bunched up, and bogged down. While a large number of cars do
make it through the maze during rush hour traffic, the individual driver takes
a considerable amount of time getting to work. Continuing this analogy, an
electronic transistor shortens a driver’s commute by using a form of mass
transit. When a bit of information is shoved into one end of a wire, the original
electrons carrying this information are not the same ones that deliver it at the
other end. Rather, the electrons smack into each other, one after the other,
until some of them get shoved out the other end. However, even at today’s
clock speeds this “bus trip” distorts a signal trying to make it to the other end
of a mother board, drowning it in traffic noise.

Unfortunately, using transistors in a computer chip can also be likened to

putting stop lights on a freeway. They direct the moving streams of electrons
from one intersection to another, but because of inductance, capacitance, and
resistance, traffic gets all bunched up behind the red lights. On green electrons
have to wait their turn to accelerate up to speed, only to pile into one another
at the next red light.

As a result, chip designers are forced to slow down the traffic flow to maintain
some semblance of order within the whole process. The composite electronic
device plods along having to wait for the slowest parts to catch up with the
rest. This bumper-car action between silicon stop lights, makes each electron

Optical processing 11
less like an automobile, and more like a horse cart full of lead bricks. It will get
the driver to work, but not in any real hurry.

Chip designers are doing everything they can to get the lead out. First they put
in lots of traffic lanes, then they put the stop lights closer together. Switching
times decreased, current flow and heat dissipation were reduced, information
processing got a little quicker. So every few years they come out with a new
and improved silicon road maze for electron bumper-cars.

The bumper-car effect prevents traffic lanes from being put very close
together. As the stop lights get closer, fewer electrons make it through. Soon
traffic at one light is slopping back into the light before it. Thus, the inherent
construction of electrons makes them less than ideal information carriers.

The ideal information carrier would have to be free from inductance,

capacitance, and resistance. It must move rapidly and directly from source to
destination. Lanes must be able to crisscross each other simultaneously in the
same 3-D space without any degradation in signal quality or cross talk
between channels. It must be able to sort, select, switch, and direct the traffic
flow instantly. Every channel must be an express lane. Everything must move
at the same speed, top speed, all the time. No slow downs, no pileups.

Squashed into gas fumed grid lock, each driver sees the stop light change long
before the cars get moving. If all drivers could get to work at the speed of light,
“rush hour” would become “rush second”! Replacing electrons with photons
means that MegaFLOPS would become TeraFLOPS and beyond. Thus, light is
superior to electricity; it is the ideal information carrier.

But, how do these qualities figure into real photonic computers? The best
electronic gates can switch a little better than 10 times in a nanosecond. If
they are really tiny and placed extremely close together the switched signal
(but not the exact electrons themselves) may have made it a hair’s width
through the semiconductor. However, in that same nanosecond, photons
carrying that exact same bit of information will have traveled nearly a foot.
photonic transistors can be made about as small as electronic ones, so same
that same bit of information could have been through millions of operations in
that same nanosecond. Why? Because the light pulse doesn’t bog down at each

Optical processing 12
gate. It can be sent through millions of photonic transistors in the same time
as electrons take to wade through only a hand full. Thus, computers made
with photonic transistors will be able to operate hundreds of thousands of
times faster than their electronic counterparts…even in serial.

MASSIVE PARALLEL ARCHITECTURES

The current trend in computing is to create “parallel architectures.” In this

practice, several thousand processors are wired together in order to complete
an overall task in a shorter amount of time. When you read this page, you read
the words in serial, one right after the other. However an image carried to
your eye arrives in a massive parallel fashion. The entire image is there at the
same time.

Broken down into individual little pieces, or pixels, that single image becomes
millions of individual information-carrying beams of light. In a photonic
computer each beam of light can undergo millions of calculations in a short
amount of time and space. That single image represents not just millions of
individual pixel beams, but millions of operations preformed on millions of
beams simultaneously. Because these composite images are continually being
modified as computation proceeds within the photonic transistors, they are
called “Dynamic Images.” Electronic circuits are simply left in the dust when
trying to match that kind of “massive parallelism.”

WHAT PHOTONIC TRANSISTORS ARE MADE OF

As you might expect, photonic transistors are not whittled out of silicon.
Instead they are made out of photographs. Inexpensive photographs. While
the many beams could be interconnected using conventional optics, the
versatility of the hologram makes it an ideal medium for hooking photonic
transistors together and interconnecting photonic-transistor-produced
dynamic images. Holographic interconnection has been a part of the present
technology for nearly 20 years. What’s needed are functioning photonic
transistors to complete the interconnection.

Optical processing 13
HOW PHOTONIC TRANSISTORS WORK?

So how can pictures be made to do the same calculating tasks now done by
complex layers of silicon?

In order to be practical, photonic transistors must be simple. They must be

easy to design, interconnect, and manufacture. They must be easy to
understand. In order to be patented they must be so simple that people say,
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” So, among all of these massively parallel
light beams, carrying immense amounts of information at the speed of light,
let me focus on one tiny little function of one tiny little photonic transistor and
show you how it works.

Taken at their most basic level, electronic computers operate using only a
small number of circuit types repeated many times over. The transistors used
to make them are arranged to imitate Boolean algebra. These simple
operations can be combined to from all of mathematics; thus, they can form
all of computing. Some of these basic operations are OR, AND, NOT, and
exclusive OR (abbreviated XOR.) Connected together they make up the
familiar NOR and NAND gates worked with in electronics design every day.

According to Boolean math, only two are required to produce all of the others,
and all of computing. For example, an AND tied into a NOT makes a NAND. If
you wanted to, you could make an entire computer composed strictly of
74LS00 NAND gates, even if each pulse does waste 10 ns to travel from an
input pin to its output pin.

While the NANDs and NORs are most common in electronic computers, two
others are of special interest in photonics. They are the OR and the XOR. I’m
sure examples of these two types of circuits are familiar to you.

As with the other boolean functions, combinations of these two types of

circuits can create all of mathematics and every type of circuit that a computer
needs, including memory. The photonic transistor preforms these two

Optical processing 14
functions beautifully and swiftly, along with signal amplification, and a
number of analog functions.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Back in 1801 Thomas Young preformed an experiment that proved that light
does has a wavelike nature. He did this by setting up an experiment whereby
two beams of light from a common source were superimposed upon each
other (see Figure 1). The light pattern produced was called interference, which
can be measured in a manner similar to ocean waves. Later individual photons
were also shown to possess this ability.

Figure 1--The double light beam interference fringe and the single beam output that produces no fringe
display the wave nature of light used to produce transistor-like functions in the photonic transistor
Today, we commonly use lasers and a Michelson Interferometer to demonstrate the effects of
interference, even though the geometric configuration of the Young experiment differs from
Michelson’s. What is important here is that two beams of light from a coherent source are recombined
by superimposing one beam on top of the other.

Figure 2 is a close-up of the light pattern in figure 1. It has three sections, so

first examine the lower one that shows the bands of light and dark. This figure
illustrates what is called an interference fringe, which results from the
recombination of two beams. The light portion is called constructive
interference (CI) and the area of darkness called destructive interference (DI).

Optical processing 15
(These terms are misnomers, for nothing is really constructed nor is anything
destroyed.)

Figure 2--The three combinations of two input beams produce:(1) Both inputs off, no light output; (2)
One beam on, even light distribution through the area; (3) Both beams on, light concentrated into the
smaller areas of an interference fringe. By separating the fringe component regions into destructive
interference (DI) areas and constructive interference (CI) areas, the photonic transistor is able to
produce the Boolean OR and XOR functions, signal amplification, and analog signal processing.

Photons affect one another differently when the two beams are traveling
together than when only a single beam is present. When both beams are on,
interference causes the photons to migrate toward each other. Photons that
ordinarily would have been flying in the DI areas have been pulled to the side
into the CI areas.

However, when only a single beam is on, no interference is present, and the
entire area is illuminated as depicted in the center section of Figure 2. The
photonic transistor exploits this natural effect in order to produce the two
Boolean functions, OR and XOR.

Like all Boolean operators, the photonic transistor has two inputs; the two
light beams of Figure 1. Switching these beams on and off can represent binary
bits of information. Now take a look at the top section of Figure 2. It has no
light at all, representing when both beams are off, a moot case. Thus Figure 2
depicts three states:

1. Both inputs are off, there is no light input.

2. If either one, or the other is on, the area is evenly lit although no

Optical processing 16
interference fringe exists.
3. When both beams are on, the interference fringe forms.

A PHOTONIC OR

In an actual photonic transistor the entire fringe may be used. However, to

understand how they work, let me zoom in on the small circles located in the
CI and DI areas. Take a piece of cardboard or paper a couple of inches square,
and punch a hole in the middle of it. That piece of paper represents a photonic
transistor. Figure 2 represents the input to the transistor in its various states.
Your eye is the detector for viewing the output.

Place the paper so that the hole is lined up with the area “A” in Figure 2
labeled “A”. In the moot case, both beams are off, so no light is output through
the hole.

Now move the paper down to the center section to area “B”. This point
represents the exact same location as “A”, only now one of the beams has been
activated. Note that either beam will turn on the output. Although there is no
interference fringe, light is still output through the hole.

Now move your paper down to the lower section, to the area labeled “C”.
Again, this point represents the exact same position, only now both beams are
on and the interference fringe has come into existence. Note that light is
output through the hole. In fact, the light coming through the hole is 4 times
brighter because of the CI than it is when only one beam is on at position B.
That there is output through the hole in the paper mask when both input
beams are on is what is important.

In your hand you hold a photonic transistor, albeit macro in size and crude in
appearance. In this position relative to the fringe, it provides the OR function.
Light coming from the paper, through the hole in the mask to your eye travels
at the highest speed known. It didn’t have to slow down or introduce any
delays in providing this basic function.

A PHOTONIC XOR

Optical processing 17
However, two are required to tango, and two Boolean functions are needed in
order to produce the others (and all of computing). So take your paper
photonic transistor and place it over the area marked “D”. This is a new
position is relative to the fringe that will be used to preform the XOR function.
In this state, both beams are off–so no output. Move it down to “E”, which
represents the same position as “D” in the first state, and again, only one beam
is on, so there is output.

Now move the mask so the hole is over position “F”. What’s different? Both
beams are still on, but because of the DI, the photons have been shoved to the
side, out of alignment with the line of sight through the hole. The input light is
now reflected into another pathway, absorbed, or whatever by the mask. So
the output through the hole is OFF. The device is a light-speed XOR.

Notice that without the mask, light from the two inputs would still exist in the
output. Without the separation of these fringe component regions, the
function is lost. The information manifested by the existence of the fringe
disappears when beams of light from the separate regions is mingled back
together again. Only with the mask in place does a separation of the
information occur in the fringe component regions.

OTHER FUNCTIONS

As with all XOR gates, if one beam is kept on all the time using a DI-
positioned mask, and the second beam is alternately turned on and off, the
output is switched off and on, you’re switching off and on the output–that is,
then the modulated input beam is on, the output is off, and vice versa.
Therefore, it is a photonic inverter, or the equivalent of a NOT circuit.

An interesting thing happens, though, when a CI positioned mask is operated

with one beam always on. When the second beam is off, the output is on
because this constant “bias” beam is on. Now, when the second beam is turned
on, interference relocates photons that used to be in the DI areas into the CI
areas, and through the hole to become the output. The intensity is now four
times greater than it was with only one switched-on beam. How can that be?

Say that in a certain time, 200 photons enter from one beam, and if the
second beam is on, 200 photons from it. With only one constant bias beam on,

Optical processing 18
the first 200 photons are spread over the entire surface of the mask. If the
hole in the mask is over only the CI area, half of the light will go through the
hole, and half of it will be stopped or diverted by the mask. So the output
through the hole will be just 100 photons.

When the second beam comes on, the interference focuses all of the light into
the CI areas. So that, along with the original 100 photons coming through the
hole, the other 100 of the bias beam are shoved over into the CI area, and
through the hole. At the same time, the second 200 from the other beam are
also focused out through the hole, so the total output is 400 photons.

Because the constant bias beam carries no information, the modulated signal
output is greater than it was in the beginning. By using additional photonic
transistors or by phasing pulses to change the fringe position, combination
photonic transistors can be constructed that, when both inputs are on, remove
the constant 100 photon carrier from the output while not harming the 400.

Therefore, the photonic transistor is an amplifier like its electronic cousin.

Granted, the gain is small. But that this gain exists even in these primitive
examples is what is important. By using optical systems that change the shape
of the fringes, and the proportion of DI area to Ci area, the actual gain may be
tuned for optimum performance. Then, a number of photonic transistors can
be cascaded together to produce appreciable gain.

Please note this is signal and is not light, the type that takes place in lasers.
That is a different process, for a different purpose.

A CI device and a DI device can be made from the same mask simply by
adjusting the position of the fringe. The fringe position can be shifted by a
slight phase change in one of the beams. This adjustment also makes the
photonic transistor into a demodulator for phase-modulated signals, because
the resulting output is amplitude modulated.

A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION

Placed between the beam-combining optics and the display screen of a

Michelson Interferometer, as in Figure 3, the mask in your hand can be made
to actually function as the world’s fastest transistor. The Michelson

Optical processing 19
Interferometer breaks the source laser beam into two and recombines them
again in the output. By blocking the light at the two side paths of the
interferometer, as needed, the two input beams may be turn on and off in
order to demonstrate all the input and corresponding output states of this
macroscopic photonic transistor.

Figure 3-- Photonic transistor demonstration using a Michelson Interferometer with a fring
component separating mask placed between the beam combining optics and the viewing screen.

The switching speed of a particular photonic transistor is the time it takes

light to travel from the beam-combining optics to the mask. The closer they
are together, the faster the transistor. Anything smaller than about an inch is
faster than the fastest electronic transistor. So imagine what kind of speed is
possible with microscopic components.

In production, photonic transistors can be made very small–near the size of

the wavelength of light being used. The higher the frequency, the shorter the
wavelength. The shorter the wavelength, the smaller and more closely they
can be packed together, and the faster the computer.

DEVELOPMENT

Will you be able to buy a desk-top photonic supercomputer next week? Maybe
not that quickly, but soon. While development will take some time, I estimate
that the first photonic hardware may be replacing some electronic computers
within five years, and accelerate from there.

Optical processing 20
Photonic transistors are so general in their nature that predicting which
products will be developed first is difficult. As with electronic transistors, they
are applicable to just about everything. The first products will be software for
the production of photonic transistor photographs and interconnecting
holograms, demonstration products, and individually connected photonic
transistors. These are expected very soon, as we arrange R&D with the variety
of interested groups both large and small. The next products are expected to
be specialized devices, such as telephone fiberoptic switching systems, and
add-on products for speeding up electronic processing. Then of course, fully
photonic teraFLOPS computers as the photonic-transistor-producing software
becomes operational.

Will there be problems in the coming photonic development? Certainly, there

will always be challenges. However, those difficulties will not arise from any
need to research and create specialized materials as with other optical
methods or to figure out some unknown quirk of physics. Rather, they are
merely the geometric problems of engineering the organizational and
architectural arrangement of components, using optical laws that are well
understood.

There is another important reason why photonic development will be much

more rapid than was the development of its electronic counterpart. Although,
the photonic transistor stands today where the electronic transistor stood 40
years ago, the great body of computer science was in its infancy. Modern-day
manufacturing technology didn’t exist. The pictures that were used to
fabricate the first computer chips were drawn by hand. The entire ordeal was
time consuming. Early electronic transistors had to be individually wired in by
hand. Printed circuits didn’t exist.

Today, the art of holography is well understood and is used to interconnect

digital light beams. Like other photographs, holograms and the photographic
masks that make up photonic computers, can be produced by computer,
calculated into existence from the basic math they are derived from. The well-
known laws of optics, existing equipment, hologram-producing programs
already available, and the principles of the photonic transistor are the
ingredients for the development time acceleration of photonic computers.

Optical processing 21
Today’s tools are much faster than those of yesteryear. Computer aided design
compresses years of development time into months or even hours. The great
body of computer science is mature and well adapted for each new computer
upgrade and is poised for the photonic conversion, which will just be the next,
upgrade.

So, do we have to compute with Light?!!

In a nut shell, the photonic transistor products, which are expected to

replace much of the electronics infrastructure during the 21st century, can be
made smaller, faster, and cheaper. They are more reliable, generate less heat,
and are not susceptible to interference from outside influences. In comparison
to photonics, even the best electronics is slow, because photons are faster than
electrons.

How fast?

Unlike electronic circuits, photonic circuits process information by

manipulating light with light at the speed of light. The amount of information
that can be processed in one second depends on how fast the components in
the circuit are able to control information.

Until the invention of the photonic transistor, it was generally thought to be

impossible to switch one beam of light on and off with another beam of light,
which is necessary in order to manipulate information and perform
computing functions completely in the light-speed optical domain. However,
the photonic transistors now being developed by a local San Diego firm are
currently switching light in 1.5 femtoseconds (fs). (One millionth of a billionth
of a second.) The photonic transistor truly is the first method developed that
switches light with light at the full speed of light.

To be precise, photonic transistors have been produced that react to photonic

signals in the time of one cycle of one wavelength of the light being used. For
red light that switching time is about 2.1 fs. Blue is about 1.5 fs, with the 1500
nm light used in fiberoptic communications switching in 5 fs.

Why are photonic transistors able to manipulate information nearly 100,000

times faster than electronic transistors?

Optical processing 22
Simple! Photons of light are comprised of octagonal electric and magnetic
fields that propagate at 186,000 miles/sec (300,000 kps) in a straight line.
Electrons are also made of fields of flowing energy that propagate at light
speed. However, the propagation paths of the energy in an electron circulate
around following the physical shape of the electron itself. Consequently, in
order for an electron to physically move from point A to point B, the energy
must circulate around the electron along a curved path, while the whole
circulating field structure migrates its way over to B. Because all energy moves
at the same speed, the energy in the electron takes longer to get to B simply
because it must cover a longer circulating distance than the energy in a
photon, which makes a straight shot of it.

This circulating energy pattern within the electron is also the reason why it’s
able to stay in one place, while the photon is not. The same feature that makes
electrons inherently slow.

Is the market ready for light speed?

In recent years the demand for bandwidth (information carrying ability) has
increased so rapidly that the electronics industry has been forced to push the
electron to its physical limits. But, the structure of the electron itself presents
a physical barrier that cannot be surpassed by any circulating field system
such as an electron, atom or molecule. So, the closer technology pushes the
electron to its limits the more their costs go expotential.

That demand for ever faster computers, and communications equipment is

expected to mushroom as more and more people come to expect broadband
services. Since the industry is now pushing the electron to its limits, the only
alternative is light.

Why is it that light is able to do so much more than electricity?

In addition to the photonic transistor’s ability to switch in one cycle, the

structure of light is quite different from the electron. At any given instant, all
of the information on an electric conductor is a function of just one variable…
the electric charge at that location. Each photon, on-the-other-hand, being
quantum, provides an independent information-carrying variable for each
independent photonic frequency or color.

Optical processing 23
So the capacity of light to carry information in serial surpasses electronics
because of light’s physical structure, but a multi-colored beam of light is like a
parallel bunch of wires where each “wire” is a different color.

How many colors are there?

Visible light is a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, like radio waves
only having carrier frequencies in the terahertz (trillion cycles per second)
range rather than the megahertz range. The photonic transistor has been
shown to have a tuning and filtering resolution finer than that of an AM radio.
So, if just the visible portion of the spectrum were to be divided into AM
radio-wide-bands there would be over 35 billion separate channels. In a
computer, that’s like having a bus width of 35 billion rather than the paultry
64 or 128 bit buses that have so greatly increased the speed of today’s
computers.

How much information can a single beam of light carry?

Each color can, in theory, carry over 200 terabits of information per second.
The entire Library of Congress has only about 30 terabits of information in it.
Multiply that times the number of colors and it represents a gigantic amount
of information carrying capacity. But not just for transmission through optical
fibers and the like. Since the photonic transistor is able to manipulate those
bits in the optical domain just as nimbly as electronic transistors manipulate
the information in electronic circuits, nearly every information processing
device can now be produced using light speed photonics.

Why use holograms to replace computer chips?

Holograms are just one method for making photonic transistors. They can be
made with optical fibers, and a host of other optical methods. However,
computer generated holograms have the ability to imitate nearly any ordinary
optical setup. The complexities of optical integrated circuits can be calculated
into a set of holograms that enable the light to manipulate the light in complex
photonic circuits. The architecture is similar to that used in electronic
computer chips. It’s just faster and less expensive to manufacture.

Optical processing 24
How can photonic transistor products be made “smaller” than their slower
electronic counterparts if they are limited by the size of the wavelength being
used?

The tremendous bandwidth of light can be used in our patented Frequency

Multiplexed Logic photonic transistors. By this method, a single physical
device can substitute for a billion devices of a typical electronic architecture.
Since so much can be done with so few physical devices, the total transistor
count is much smaller. Consequently, the complete apparatus can be made
much smaller than its electronic equivalent when comparing apples with
apples, i.e., bandwidth for bandwidth.

Why can photonic transistor circuits be made cheaper than electronics?

High speed electronics… that is, the best that can be achieved, takes extremely
pure materials and extremely precise manufacturing equipment that can
control manufacturing down to the size of an atom. One atom out of place and
the part fails. Photonic transistors can be made of glass, plastic, aluminum
and other common materials. Manufacturing tolerances are well within the
capability of a growing number of commercial optical manufacturing
methods. And, some manufacturing methods can actually stamp out photonic
transistor holograms.

What about noise?

Unlike electronic circuits, conventional optical amplifiers and many nonlinear

optics, the light in photonic transistors does not interact with the material of
which the transistor is made, in such a way that would add noise to the signals
passing through. One reason for this is that the process of optical interference,
that the transistors are based on, involves only the redistribution of energy
rather than absorption or re-emission of energy that can produce heat, which
in turn could introduce noise into the signals.

When can we expect to see photonic transistor devices on the market?

Logically, we have no reason to push the photon to its limits at this time. We
only have to beat the slugish electron in order to beat the electronic or even
the optoelectronic competition.

Optical processing 25
What about competing optical methods?

The search for specialized materials that would do what photonic transistors
are already doing has been a well funded failure among many companies,
large and small. Discovering a practical switching material has been so
difficult that the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 30, 1990) labeled it “unobtainium.”
The picture hasn’t improved much since. So far, the nonlinear optical
materials being developed have only been able to switch in several thousands
of femtoseconds. However, the greater continuing problem is that, as the
pulse repetition rate exceeds 30 mhz or so, they incinerate themselves!

Their fundamental operation depends on altering the properties of these

special crystals using powerful light beams. Whereas the interference-based
photonic transistors can operate using only a couple of photons. Even if
someone does discover an efficient, low power “unobtanium,” it still must be
manufactured into photonic microcircuits. Not to mention that no one has yet
even suggested a method for doing frequency multiplexed logic with them to
reduce component count and manufacturing costs. This is because the
frequency range of nonlinear optical materials is restricted by the natural
oscillations of the atoms which make them up.

What is the relationship between AON and the Rocky Mountain Research
Center (RMRC)?

The photonic transistor was invented at RMRC and sold to Cyber Dyne
Computer Corp., which is now All Optical Networks, Inc. So this information
is presented in order to answer some of the most frequently asked questions
about the photonic transistor, and to document RMRC’s history of advanced
science.

So, why compute with light?

Photons of light have the potential for manipulating information that far
surpasses electronics, because photons can move faster than electrons…
especially in semiconductors. Photons carry many orders of magnitude more
information, produce substantially less heat, and are not subject to the
restrictions caused by capacitance, inductance, resistance, and reluctance.

Optical processing 26
Computer generated holograms used to make holographic integrated circuits
can be mass produced less expensively than microelectronics.

The demand for information services has forced the electronics industry to
push the electron to its physical limits, so photons are the only option.

Why not? It’s only logical.

Optical Development Boom is worldwide

Photonics development is booming worldwide

in optics and optical components for
computing and other applications. Estimates
of global photonic technology sales in 1999
were as high as $100 billion and rising with
the ever-increasing demands of data traffic.
KMI Corp. reports data traffic growing at
100% per year worldwide, while London's
Phillips Group estimates that U.S. data traffic will increase by 300% annually.

Right: Blue and red lasers reflecting off mirrors -- a glimpse of things to come
in computing technology? Photo Credit: Department of Energy/Coherent Inc l
Lasergroup.

Most components now in demand are electro-optical (EO) hybrids, which are
limited by the speed of their electronic parts. All-optical components will have
the advantage of speed over EO devices, but there is a lack of efficient
nonlinear optical (NLO) materials that can respond at low power levels.
Almost all current all-optical components require a high level of laser power to
function as required.

Researchers from the University of Southern California working with a team

from the University of California at Los Angeles have jointly developed an
organic polymer with a switching frequency of 60 GHz -- three times faster
than the current industry-standard lithium niobate crystal-based devices.

Optical processing 27
Commercial development of such a device could revolutionize the
"information superhighway" and speed data processing for optical computing.

Another group at Brown University and IBM Corporation's Almaden Research

Center in San Jose, CA, have used ultrafast laser pulses to build ultrafast data-
storage devices, achieving switching down to 100ps -- results that are almost
ten times faster than currently available "speed limits".

A European collaborative effort has demonstrated high-speed optical data

input and output in free-space between IC chips in computers at a rate of
more than 1 Tb/sec. Astro Terra, in collaboration with Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) has built a 32-channel 1-Gigabit per second earth-
to-satellite link with a 2000 km range.

In Japan, NEC Corporation has developed a method for interconnecting

circuit boards optically using Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser arrays
(VCSEL). Researchers at Osaka City University reported a method for
automatic alignment of a set of optical beams in space with a set of optical
fibers. Researchers at NTT in Tokyo have designed an optical back plane with
free-space optical interconnects using tunable beam deflectors and a mirror.
Their project achieved 1000 interconnections per printed-circuit board, with
throughput ranging from 1 to 10 Terabits/sec.

Companies, universities and government labs are reporting more all-optical

and organic technology developments almost weekly. Stay tuned for more hot
future news in this bright new realm of science!

Optical processing 28
 Logic gates are the building blocks
of any digital system," he continues.
"An optical logic gate is a switch
that controls one light beam with another. It is "on" when the device transmits
light, and "off" when it blocks the light."

Right: A schematic of the nanosecond all-optical AND logic gate setup O.

Frazier, Mark S. Paley, and William K. Witherow.

"Our setup for the picosecond switch was similar, except that the
phthalocyanine film was replaced with a hollow fiber coated from inside with
a thin polydiacetylene film. Both collinear laser beams were focused on one
end of the tube, and a lens at the other end focused the output onto a
monochrometer with a fast detector attached. The product of the two beams
demonstrates three of the four characteristics of a NAND logic gate."

"Optical bistable devices and logic gates such as these are the equivalent of
electronic transistors," concludes Dr. Abdeldayem. "They operate as very high
speed on-off switches and are also useful as optical cells for information
storage."

According to Dr. Frazier, these all-optical computer components and thin-

films developed by NASA are essential to the current worldwide work in
electro-optical hybrid computers - and will help to make possible the
astounding organic optical computers that will be the standard of future
terrestrial and space information, operating and communication systems.

Optical processing 29
References:

• C. Dorrer et al. "Linear Optical Sampling" IEEE Photon. Technol.

Lett. 15 1746-1748, 2003.
• C. Dorrer et al. "Measurement of eye diagrams and constellation diagrams of
optical sources using linear optics and waveguide technology", J. Lightwave
Technol. 23(1) 178-186, 2005.
• Nogiwa et al. "Optical Sampling System Using a Periodically Poled Lithium
Niobate Crystal",IEICE Trans. Electron., E85-C(1), 156-164, 2002.

Optical processing 30