ABSTRACT
The elements of digital optical circuits includes optical logic elements (whether all-optical or optoelectronic in mechanism) capable of receiving and transmitting information through photons, arrays of these elements with parallelism contemplated in the range of 104-108, interconnecting optics, power supplies (either optical or electrical or both) capable of deployment in massively parallel arrays, data storage devices on short or long-term scales, input and output devices, control and clocking devices. This chapter considers the physics of computation systems and observes the lessons available by analogy with electronic circuits. Holographic optical elements (HOEs) in various forms can provide optical wiring for digital optical circuits. Such HOEs are only some examples of a new generation of micro-optical components: other materials such as silicon nitride can be used to make phase relief Dammann gratings which use diffraction properties to give exactly equal arrays of beams.
