*** ABSTRACT 96-61235 O'Callaghan This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop next generation analog and digital Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (FLC)-VLSI spatial light modulators (SLMs) which surpass the speed of present generation SLMs by nearly an order of magnitude. In addition to their commercial use as miniature displays current generation FLC-VLSI SLMs are enabling long awaited, commercially viable, optical image processing systems whose computing speed outstrips purely electronic processors. When used as part of a computing subsystem the performance of present generation SLMs is enough to tax the data bandwidth capabilities of inexpensive general purpose digital computers. The intent of this Phase I effort is to greatly extend the performance of analogized digital FLC-VLSI SLMs to match or surpass the data throughput rates of current high performance digital systems. The plan is to achieve this goal by drawing on and extending combined advances in both VLSI design and FLC performance. The proposed high-speed SLMs can be used in biometric applications such as fingerprint and face recognition, high-speed image processing, volumetric 3-D displays, industrial machine vision, and improved sequential color miniature displays. ***
