In the early 80’s, optical signal processing was the next big thing in array processing. Multiply-accumulates we’re done in optics and on the camera detector,

In the early 80’s, optical signal processing was the next big thing in array processing. Multiply-accumulates we’re done in optics and on the camera detector, and it was super fast, but the dynamic range was limited to less than 12 bits. By 1990, optical signal processing was dying and parallel array processing was the “next big thing” in array processing. Systolic arrays and transputers were going to be array processing engines of the future. The problem was to optimally fit the algorithm into the computing architecture—-compilers were complicated. By 1995-2000, general purpose processors, operating systems and MATLAB were fast enough to put most of that to bed except for graphics cards and special effects. GPU’s continue to be the latest in the history of array processing hardware solutions. But I believe their days are also numbered with the advent of quantum computing systems and other technologies.