Design for an Optical Random Access Memory.

Cascadable optically nonlinear arrays of logic devices interconnected with space invariant optical components form the core memory of a digital computer. Access time to any portion of the memory is O(log sub 2 N) gate delays for logic gates with fanin and fanout of 2, where N is the size of the memory in bits. The cost of the design in switching components is near-minimal for a random access memory (RAM), between 1 and 2 components per stored bit of information depending on the size of the memory. The design is extensible to very large RAM's, although a parallel access memory is preferred for large memories.