High-Speed Holographic Image Generation Using Cheops Daughter Cards
Holographic fringe decoding has been implemented with the CHEOPS image
processing system and a new daughter card called the Splotch Engine - a
superposition stream-processing card. The two-step Hogel-Vector Encoding
method used is a type of
Diffraction-Specific fringe computation
that
allows for holographic bandwidth compression ratios of up to 20:1. An
array of "hogel vectors" (discretized spectral descriptions) is computed
from a 3-D object scene on an SGI workstation, and then rapidly downloaded
to the CHEOPS P2 processor module. There, the Splotch Engine performs
Hogel-Vector Decoding, converting a stream of hogel vectors into hologram
fringes that are displayed by the
holovideo
system as 3-D images. With two
Splotch Engines operating in tandem, typical speeds are 3.0 seconds for the
decoding of a 0.6-MB hogel-vector array into a complete 36-MB display
fringe pattern. That throughput represents over 200 million
multiply-accumulate operations per second!
John A. Watlington, Mark Lucente, Carlton J. Sparrell, V. Michael Bove, Jr.,
Ichiro Tamitani, A hardware architecture for rapid generation of electro-holographic fringe patterns", Proceedings of SPIE #2406 Practical Holography IX, 2406-23, (SPIE, Bellingham, WA, 1995).