Masking traveling beams: Optical solutions for NP-complete problems, trading space for time

Shlomi Dolev, Hen Fitoussi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

Two architectures for optical processors designed to solve instances of NP-Complete problems, trading space for time, are suggested. The first approach mimics the traveling salesman by an exponential number of traveling beams, that simultaneously examine the different possible paths. The other approach uses a pre-processing stage in which O (n2) masks consisting of an exponential number of locations, are constructed; each representing a different edge in the graph. The choice and combination of the appropriate (small) subset of these masks yields the solution. The solution is rejected in cases where the combination of these masks completely blocks the light and accepted otherwise. We present detailed designs for basic primitives of the optical processor. We propose designs for solving instances of Hamiltonian path, Traveling Salesman, Clique, Independent Set, Vertex Cover, Partition, 3-SAT, 3D-matching, and the Permanent.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)837-853
Number of pages17
JournalTheoretical Computer Science
Volume411
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 6 Feb 2010

Keywords

  • NP-complete problems
  • Optical computing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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