초록 ▼

A block oriented solid state optical memory having a distributed data storage architecture comprises a lens array including a plurality of laterally separated lenslets which have numerical apertures selected to cause them to focus essentially diffraction limited images of a photoemitter array in par

A block oriented solid state optical memory having a distributed data storage architecture comprises a lens array including a plurality of laterally separated lenslets which have numerical apertures selected to cause them to focus essentially diffraction limited images of a photoemitter array in parallel onto laterally displaced sections of a data mask, so that the images optically align with respective photosensors. The lenslets are formed on the first surface of the lens array, and the data mask is supported on or very close to the last surface of the lens array to minimize the scattering of reflected light. An opaque light shield on the first surface of the lens array optically masks the area between the lenslets to eliminate unwanted stray light. Furthermore, in at least some embodiments of the invention, the light shield extends into the apertures of the lenslets to stop them down sufficiently to obtain substantially diffraction limited performance.

대표청구항 ▼

In a solid state optical memory having a photoemitter array including a plurality of selectively and individually energizeable photoemitters, a photodetector array including a plurality of photosensors, and a data mask optically interposed between said photoemitter and photodetector arrays; the impr

In a solid state optical memory having a photoemitter array including a plurality of selectively and individually energizeable photoemitters, a photodetector array including a plurality of photosensors, and a data mask optically interposed between said photoemitter and photodetector arrays; the improvement comprising a lens array located between said photoemitter array and said data mask, said lens array including a plurality of spatially separated lenslets for focusing plural, spatially separated images of said photoemitter array in parallel onto said data mask, said images being optically aligned with respective ones of said photosensors and having sufficient resolution to separately resolve each of said photoemitters, whereby said memory is opticaly partitioned into a plurality of spatially displaced memory sectors and each of said memory sectors is optically subdivided into a plurality of selectively illuminable memory cells, said lenslets having apertures selected so that said images are essentially diffraction limited, whereby said memory sectors are finely subdivided for the storage of relatively densely compacted data.