| Popis: |
Recent dramatic increases in the cost /performance ratio of computers are beginning tohave some impact on the field of optical design. Although the mainstream of opticaldesign still utilizes large computers, production programs that run on minicomputers arenow well established, and we have written programs of somewhat limited scope that run ondesktop systems.Advances in computer technology to date have been mostly in hardware, specifically inlow -cost central processing units and large semiconductor memory systems, for which pricesare currently decreasing at a rate of 30% /year, with the prospect of even greater ratesin the future. Although there have been major developments in various computer peri-pherals, none have had so great an impact as those in memories and processors. Curiouslyenough, these advances have been made possible to a large extent by improvements inphotofabrication technology, which, in turn, have been enabled by the availability ofimproved microcircuit lenses designed using computers!Granted that computer technology will continue to advance at its present rate forawhile, it becomes apparent that systems of unprecedented power will become available ina few years, and one may inquire as to how best to use such systems for optical design.There appear to be two areas in which significant improvement in optical design programsstill remains to be made: optimization, and man -machine interaction.In spite of twenty year's efforts, nobody has really solved the optimization problemin optical design. With very few exceptions, current optimization programs utilize adamped- least -squares method based on a linearization of the problem; the method is knownto stagnate under certain conditions, and only finds local minima. The availability oflarge systems makes further research on this problem of interest.Concerning man -machine interaction, today's programs leave a great deal to be desiredwith regard to ease of use and comprehension of output by human designers. In the realworld of optical design, where the quality of a design depends on close interactionbetween designer and computer, the addition of friendly interfaces can be of significantimportance. Here, the availability of large low -cost memory systems will permit the useof interactive graphics on a routine basis in optical design programs, and this may bemore significant in practice than advances in numerical analysis. |
