SUPERCOMPUTER DATA/KNOWLEDGE BASES

SOLICITATION AF92-052 REQUIRES AN INVESTIGATION AND DESIGN OF AN APPROPRIATE MECHANISM FOR DEVELOPING LARGE SUPERCOMPUTER DATA/KNOWLEDGE BASES. OPTICOMP CORPORATION PROPOSES TO IMPLEMENT A LIMITED SET OF DATA/ KNOWLEDGE LIASE ALGORITHMS ON A DIGITAL OPTO-ELECTRONIC COMPUTER CURRENTLY BEING INTECICATED UNDER ROME LABORATORY^ONR CONTRACT N00017-89-C-0266 . THE - ARCHITECTUJ^E OF THE DIGITAL QPTICAL GOMPUTER (DOG II) WILL BE CAPABLE OF PERFORMING;3 COMPREHENSIVE SET OF FULL TEXT^DATA^KNOWLEDGE BASE OPERATIONS. THE DATA INI)UT RATE OF DOC II IS 12.8 GBITS PER SECOND. THE MACHINE IS DESIGNED TO PROVIDE 10E12 BINARY OPERATIONS PER SECOND. ASCII EQUALITY DETECTION, FOR EXAMPLFI, WHICH IS THE ALGORITHM USED FOR TEXT SEARCH, WILL RUN AT 51.2 BILLION COL^PARES PER SECOND. MOST 'IATA/KNOWLEDGE BASED OPERATIONS RE^IRE SEARCHING A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF D:)CUMENTS TO RETRIEVE AND PROCESS ONLY A FEW PAGES OR DATA VECTORS. IN THE PRO^^OSED CONFIGURATION, TEXTUAL DATA ARE STORED ON OPTICAL DISKS, , RETRIEVED - N PARALLEL, AND PROCESSED "ON-THE-FLY" BY THE OPTICAL COMPUTER. ONLY DATA THAT SATISFY A PARTICULAR QUERY ARE CONVERTED INTO ELECTRONIC SIGNALS AN(! TRANSFERRED TO THE END-USER. A COMBINATION OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL SPATIAL II(IHT MODULATORS AND PHOTODETECTORS ARE USED FOR ARRAY PROCESSING. . IN THIS WA^I, THE SYSTEM TAKES FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE SPEED AND PARALLELISM - OF DIGITAL OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY. THE TE(-HNOLOGIES OF OPTICAL COMPUTING AND OPTICAL MASSIVE MEMORY SUBSYSTEMS