Optical SuperComputing: First International Workshop, OSC 2008, Vienna, Austria, August 26, 2008, Proceedings

OCS, the International Workshop on Optical SuperComputing, is a new annual forum for research presentations on all facets of optical computing for solving hard computation tasks. Optical computing devices have the potential to build the very next computing infrastructure. Given the frequency limitations and cross-talk phenomena, as well as the soft-errors, of electronic devices on one hand, and the natural parallelism of optical computing devices, as well as the advances in ?ber optics and optical switches, on the other hand, optical c- puting is becoming increasingly marketable. The focus of the workshop is on research surrounding the theory, design, speci?cation, analysis, implementation, and application of optical supercomputers. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: design of optical computing devices; electro-optics devices for interacting with optical computing devices; practical implementations; analysis of existing devices and case studies; optical and laser switching technologies; applications and algorithms for optical devices; and alpha practical, x-rays and nano-technologies for optical computing. The First OSC workshop was held on August 26th, 2008, in Vienna, Austria, co-located with the 7th International Conference on Unconventional Computing. This volume contains eight contributions selected by the program committee andtwoinvitedpapers. Allsubmittedpaperswerereadandevaluatedbyatleast three program committee members, assisted by external reviewers. The review process was aided by the EasyChair system. OSC 2008 was organized in cooperation with OSA the Optical Society of America. The support of Ben-Gurion University and Babe?-Bolyai University is also gratefully acknowledged.