A prototype for optical interconnection in massively parallel processing and its physical and optical modelling

Communication between computing systems is now recognized as posing the main limitation to increasing the speed of all electronic systems beyond levels currently achieved in existing supercomputers. Optical interconnects hold great promise in eliminating current communication bottlenecks because of properties that stem from optics inherent parallelism. Characteristic properties and general features of a free-space oriented image distributor are discussed. Experiments were executed to consolidate the feasibility of such an image-distributing technique when implemented in a massively parallel processing environment. Simulation results of its successor indicate that the system's expandability will ultimately lead to a solution to the problem of scalability