Systolic processing architectures using optoelectronic interconnects

Systolic arrays have traditionally provided efficient, high performance execution for computation intensive applications. Despite the extensive research in systolic arrays, system designers must continually incorporate new technological advances to improve node communications, I/O bandwidth, and programmability. This paper presents optoelectronic interconnect as a communication method for systolic arrays in early image processing applications. Optoelectronic interconnects provide potentially high I/O bandwidth required to maintain high utilization rate for systolic arrays. In addition, optoelectronic interconnects provides a two-dimensional focal-plane topology ideal for systolic image processing systems. This paper introduces two new systolic architectures that incorporate integrated optoelectronics to provide an extremely compact, high performance, highly efficient image processing system. Several important early image processing applications developed for these architectures are also described.