Design and performance analysis of a smart optoelectronic database filter for relational database applications

A challenging task facing the designers for the next generation of archival storage system is to provide storage capacities several orders of magnitude larger than existing systems while maintaining current data access times. To meet this challenge, a smart optoelectronic database filter suitable for large capacity relational database systems that use page-oriented optical storage devices has been developed. The photonic VLSI device technology based database filter monolithically integrates optical detectors, photoreceiver circuits, data manipulation logic, and filter control circuitry onto a single CMOS chip. Since only valid search data is passed to the host computer, the introduction of a database filter can dramatically reduce database search time. This paper presents the design and performance analysis of the database filter system. Simulation data suggested that a 32 x 32-bit filter fabricated in a 0.35 mum CMOS process could have an optical page read rate of 263 Mpages/s and support 286 Mrecords/s transfer rate to a host computer.