Optical implementation of a single-iteration thresholding algorithm with applications to parallel data-base/knowledge-base processing

Threshold (or relative magnitude) search is traditionally performed iteratively in a bit-serial manner in optical data-base/knowledge-base machines, which results in an execution time proportional to the operand size. We present a single-step threshold search algorithm and its optical implementation. The proposed algorithm performs magnitude comparison in constant time, independent of the operand size, and consequently it greatly increases the performance of optical data-base/knowledge-base processing operations such as searching, selection, retrieving, and sorting.