Optoelectronic Processors Implemented in the Inversion Channel Technology

The Inversion Channel Technology is proposed as the basis for optical interconnections to address imaging system applications requiring high interconnection densities and fast data transfer. This technology has produced vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (=2 mA threshold), vertical cavity resonant detectors (0.6 A/W responsivity) and high performance heterostructure FETs (ft>20GHz) all using a common fabrication sequence. This project will involve the evaluation of integrated optoelectronic circuits in the inversion channel technology as the building blocks for image processing system applications. An evaluation will be made of the system processing speed, power and size for a proposed packaging approach. The fanout tradeoffs will be determined. The evaluation will determine a suitable architecture from the five possibilities of an optical artificial neural network, an optical quadratic processor, an optical morphological processor and an interferometric processor. The integrated optics approach will be evaluated versus the 3D interconnect scheme based on their potential to produce 2D arrays. The inversion channel circuits will be shown to provide an ideal approach to implement free-space interconnects with a high density of electronic gates simultaneously together with emission and detection at the pixel location.