Writing and resetting RWORM optical memories

Determine efficient and practical mechanisms for performing write and reset operations on resettable write-once-read-many (RWORM) optical memories used in the proposed all-optical computing architecture, ensuring compatibility with the architecture’s low-latency, high-bandwidth memory access model.

Background

The paper proposes an all-optical computing architecture that relies heavily on non-volatile optical memories, specifically resettable write-once-read-many (RWORM) storage, to exploit the high load-to-store ratio prevalent in many workloads, including AI inference. Read operations can be near-instantaneous and highly parallel in the optical domain, potentially achieving constant, low-latency access on the order of nanoseconds.

However, while read performance is well-motivated, the authors explicitly state that the approach leaves open the problem of how to perform writing and resetting operations on RWORM memories. They discuss compiler-level strategies such as copy-on-write (COW) and functional programming paradigms to minimize mutability, but the concrete mechanisms (and constraints) for RWORM write/reset operations remain unresolved and are crucial for system practicality.