Fully parallel analog optical calculation of multiple outer products

An analog optical processor for evaluating weighted sums of outer products in parallel is described. It uses a linear array of light sources oriented along the diagonal, two-dimensional spatial light modulators to encode input vectors, a two-dimensional detector array to generate the output, and conventional spherical and cylindrical lenses. This system can be used to multiply two matrices as well as to evaluate a weighted rank-1 synthesis of images in a single clock cycle of the processor. Initial experimental results are presented, and factors limiting the performance are described. Implications of this architecture to optical signal- and image-processing systems are discussed.