All-optical computation — A parallel integrator based upon a single gate full adder

The achievement of low power all-optical bistability in small semiconductor devices at the end of the 1970's led to an upsurge in interest in all-optical information processing and optical computing. Based on the proven characteristics of existing bistable systems designs are put forward in this paper for a parallel optical integrator, using a single bistable element for full-adder operation. Optical storage or beam delay computational loops, and time-series to space-parallel conversion designs are presented.