This paper describes various VLSI systems for microphotonic applications. The first project investigates an optimum phase design implementing a multi phase Opto-ULSI processor for multi-function capable optical networks. This research is oriented around the initial development of an 8 phase Opto-ULSI processor that implements a Beam Steering (BS) Opto-ULSI processor (OUP) for integrated intelligent photonic system (IIPS), while investigating the optimal phase characteristics and developing compensation for the nonlinearity of liquid crystal. The second part provides an insight into realisation of a novel 3-D configurable chip based on "sea-of-pixels" architecture, which is highly suitable for applications in multimedia systems as well as for computation of coefficients for generation of holograms required in optical switches. The paper explores strategies for implementation of distributed primitives for arithmetic processing. This entails optimisation of basic cells that would allow using these primitives as part of a 3-D "sea-of-pixel" configurable processing array. The concept of 3-D Soft-Chip Technology (SCT) entails integration of "Soft-Processing Circuits" with "Soft-Configurable Circuits", which effectively manipulates hardware primitives through vertical integration of control and data. Thus the notion of 3-D Soft-Chip emerges as a new design paradigm for content-rich multimedia, telecommunication and photonic-based networking system applications. Combined with the effective manipulation of configurable hardware arithmetic primitives, highly efficient and powerful soft configurable processing systems can be realized.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Multimedia, Indium, System integration, Sensors, Analog electronics, Transistors, Telecommunications, Mobile communications, Array processing
Mobile multimedia communication has rapidly become a significant area of research and development constantly challenging boundaries on a variety of technological fronts. The processing requirements for the capture, conversion, compression, decompression, enhancement, display, etc. of increasingly higher quality multimedia content places heavy demands even on current ULSI (ultra large scale integration) systems, particularly for mobile applications where area and power are primary considerations. The ADC presented in this paper is designed for a vertically integrated (3D) system comprising two distinct layers bonded together using Indium bump technology. The top layer is a CMOS imaging array containing analogue-to-digital converters, and a buffer memory. The bottom layer takes the form of a configurable array processor (CAP), a highly parallel array of soft programmable processors capable of carrying out complex processing tasks directly on data stored in the top plane. This paper presents a ADC scheme for the image capture plane. The analogue photocurrent or sampled voltage is transferred to the ADC via a column or a column/row bus. In the proposed system, an array of analogue-to-digital converters is distributed, so that a one-bit cell is associated with one sensor. The analogue-to-digital converters are algorithmic current-mode converters. Eight such cells are cascaded to form an 8-bit converter. Additionally, each photo-sensor is equipped with a current memory cell, and multiple conversions are performed with scaled values of the photocurrent for colour processing.
In the span of a few years, mobile multimedia communication has rapidly become a significant area of research and development constantly challenging boundaries on a variety of technological fronts. Video compression, a fundamental component for most mobile multimedia applications, generally places heavy demands in terms of the required processing capacity. Hardware implementations of typical modern hybrid codecs require realisation of components such as motion compensation, wavelet transform, quantisation, zerotree coding and arithmetic coding in real-time. While the implementation of such codecs using a fast generic processor is possible, undesirable trade-offs in terms of power consumption and speed must generally be made. The improvement in power consumption that is achievable through the use of a slow-clocked massively parallel processing environment, while maintaining real-time processing speeds, should thus not be overlooked. An architecture to realise such a massively parallel solution for a zerotree entropy coder is, therefore, presented in this paper.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.