OPTOELECTRONIC IMPLEMENTATION OF NEURAL NETWORKS

Abstract

The performance of electronic neural networks will eventually be limited by the capacity of their interconnections as operating speeds are increased. The use of optical connections to link electronic elements offers a way to overcome this problem. In particular, spatial optic techniques are especially suited to neural systems because of their parallel structure. Three experimental optoelectronic networks are described that employ holographic components and arrays of high-speed optical modulators. These networks have been used to demonstrate operation at 50 MHz, novel training algorithms and the expansion of a network to 64 × 8 connections with optical fan-out. A hybrid technique for integrating optoelectronic systems is also being developed.