Advanced Ultra High Speed Processor Technologies

To address the Navy's requirement for an increase in the throughput of image and/or other sensor processing, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop an application-specific ultra high speed processor. POC will comprehensively study the advances in electronics technology and associated design aids, and the specific needs of real-time perspective scene generation. Recent advances in submicron very large-scale integration (VLSI) technology have made possible the integration of millions of transistors on a single chip, while advanced packaging techniques (such as multi-chip module bonding) can reduce physical size, power consumption, and weight. Also, optoelectronic interconnects can be used to increase the board- to-board data bandwidth. User-friendly computer-aided design tools are available to assist in the rapid prototyping of high-performance computing systems. All of these technological breakthroughs will be used to develop the ultra high speed processors for real-time imagery processing. The processor's computational power can be in the range of tens of billion operations per second. A variety of configurations can be supported to meet the needs of different applications, including both on-board and off-board imagery sources.