Optical computing apparatus and method

An optical computing apparatus, comprising:

• a beam splitting phase shift circuit configured to receive a plurality of input optical signals that indicate input data, and output a plurality of groups of intermediate optical signals based on the plurality of input optical signals, wherein each input optical signal is used to obtain one group of intermediate optical signals in the plurality of groups of intermediate optical signals, the input data comprises a plurality of elements, and one input optical signal of the plurality of input optical signals indicates one element in the input data;
• and
• a beam combination circuit configured to receive the plurality of groups of intermediate optical signals and obtain a plurality of output optical signals based on the plurality of groups of intermediate optical signals, each output optical signal of the plurality of output optical signals comprises one intermediate optical signal in each of the plurality of groups of intermediate optical signals, and output data indicated by the plurality of output optical signals is obtained through two-dimensional Fourier transform performed on the input data.