Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Lenslet | Subject: ODSPE
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 11 October 2001
Optical DSP aims for 8TOPS performance
level
Lenslet Labs has unveiled the world's first commercial optics-based digital signal processing technology, following a successful technology demonstration.
Lenslet Labs has unveiled the world's first commercial optics-based digital signal processing technology, following a successful technology demonstration The new technology boosts the performance of DSP, setting new performance levels of tera-operations per second in a single component
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 3 May 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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TeraOPS performance from optically based DSP
Lenslet Labs has unveiled the architecture of the world's first commercial reconfigurable optically based digital signal processing engine (ODSPE).
Optical DSP to show up in Boston
Lenslet will demonstrate the world's first commercial optical processor at the Milcom 2003 exhibition next week in Boston.
The technology, based on a proprietary optical core, takes multiple electronic digital inputs, converts them into optical signals (photons), performs the desired computation at light speed in the optical core, and then converts the optical output signals back into digital electronic form.
Lenslet Labs has taken advantage of new optical components that have appeared on the market in recent years, as well as breakthrough proprietary signal conditioning algorithms.
Lenslet's optical digital signal processing engine (ODSPE) reaches tera-operations per second (TOPS) with the potential of reaching hundreds of TOPS in the foreseeable future, surpassing current DSP speeds that are measured in hundreds and thousands of MOPS.
Further reading
Optical DSP wins magazine award
The EnLight256, the industry's first commercial optical digital signal processor, has received an award from Electronic Products Magazine for "product of the year".
Low-cost FPGA family available in production
Built on TSMC's 65nm low-power process, the Cyclone III family includes devices that are qualified for commercial, industrial and extended temperatures.
Unlike traditional DSPs, the ODSPE uses mathematical transforms rather than instructions as its basic atomic operations.
This greatly accelerates software development time by mapping computation-intensive algorithms onto the ODSPE at a =conceptually higher level of abstraction.
Lenslet's ODSPE is reconfigurable and can be dynamically tailored to the required transform type.
It provides on-the-fly programmability, flexibility and upgradeability.
"Lenslet has been successful in leveraging optical technologies originally developed for optical transmission and switching, and applying them to optical computing using a unique algorithmic approach", said Aviram Sariel, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lenslet Labs.
"The ultra-high performance achieved by Lenslet's ODSPE will allow development of new cost-effective applications that require intensive signal processing computation power, previously considered unachievable".
"It's a very rare occasion when I can say that a company has a breakthrough technology, but Lenslet appears to have just that", said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts.
"Lenslet is capitalising on new laser technology and its extensive understanding of signal processing to develop a unique optical digital signal processing engine".
Lenslet Labs also unveiled its road map for the first product line that will be based on the new technology.
EnLight256, the first product, will be a general-purpose off-the-shelf reconfigurable optical transform engine, supporting various standard transforms such as correlations, vector-matrix manipulation, Fourier transforms, discrete cosine transforms and discrete sine transforms.
The initial target performance for EnLight256 is 8TOPS.
Target applications include 3G basestations, broadband wireless access, xDSL concentrators, video servers, machine vision and more.
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