Hybrid optical-electronic pattern recognition

Optics uses photons (bosons). Electronics uses electrons and holes (Fermions). Each has strengths.

Optics allows massive fanin/fanout that electronics cannot possibly achieve. Optics allows us to work in the wave domain where virtual operations of great value can be performed free of energy cost and many time costs, so long as they are never directly measured. But the operations achievable are strictly linear.

For background on these matters see:

• "Wave particle Duality Considerations in Optical Computing," Applied Optics, Vol. 28, No. 12 (15 June 1989) pg. 2184-2186, H. John Caulfield and Joseph Shamir
• "Wave-Particle-Duality Processors: Characteristics, Requirements, and Applications," Journal of the Optical Society of America A, Vol. 7, No. 7, pg. 1314-1323, July 1990, H. John Caulfield and Joseph Shamir.
• "Reversibility and Energetics in Optical Computing," Opt. Lett, Vol 15, No. 16, pg. 912-914 (August 15, 1990) H. J. Caulfield, Joseph Shamir, J. E. Ludman and P. Greguss. .
• "Complexity Issues in Optical Computing," Optical Computing & Processing, Vol. 1, No. 2, pg. 109-113 (1991), H. J. Caulfield, J. D. Brasher, and C. F. Hester
• "Virtually-Deterministic Quantum Computing of Nondeterministic Polynomial Problems," Int'l Journ. of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 30, No. 7, pg. 973-977 (1991), J. D. Brasher, C. F. Hester, and H. J. Caulfield
• "Massively Parallel Optical PLA," International Journal of Optical Computing, Vol.2, 49-62, (1991), S. A. Kupiec and H. J. Caulfield
• "Parallel Optical Processors - Some Basic Considerations," Intl. Journal of Optical Computing, Vol. 2, Pg.73-88 (1991), Joseph Shamir and H. John Caulfield
• "Space - Time Complexity in Optical Computing," Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing, 2, (1992), 373-378, H. J. Caulfield
• “Perspectives in Optical Computing,” Computer, Vol. 31, No.2, (February 1998), pp. 22-25, H.John Caulfield
• “Consuming complexity by space-time-fanout in optical computing,” Asian J. Physics 10, 237-243 (2001), H. J. Caulfield

Electronics is good for everything else, e.g. input, output, and nonlinear operations.

All optical pattern recognition is, therefore hybrid.