Page-oriented associative holographic memory.

Holographic memories are an attractive candidate for future large capacity parallel associative search storage systems. Parallel retrieval of stored data is essential to many data processing applications, yet electronic implementations of associative memories are very costly. A straightforward extension of more conventional holographic storage techniques can be used to implement an associative memory. The various output beams for a two-dimensional page associative store are analyzed and separated to provide the desired output function. A correlation-type associative memory is also analyzed and compared with the first system. Applications of these memories are discussed for complex search algorithms and also for the potential of associative data processing.