Optalysys (Pontefract, England) has launched a Series A funding round to support product commercialization activities up to the first product launches in 2017. The company is a 2013 spin-off from Cambridge University and has declared that it is only days away from launching a prototype optical processor with the potential to realize Exascale levels of processing power on a desktop sized computer at a fraction of the energy consumption and cost of conventional supercomputers and high performance computing (HPC) technology.
Grant Thornton UK LLP is supporting the Series A funding round. Darren Bear, partner at Grant Thornton UK, notes “This is a unique opportunity to provide funding to support the development of disruptive optical processing technology.” Optalysys CEO, Nick New, adds, “Optalysys’ technology will deliver processing power beyond the capabilities of traditional HPC methods. This investment will support us in bringing our initial products to market in 2017.”
Related Article:Startup Optalysys aims to demo gigaFLOPS-scale optical processor in January 2015, with video explaining how it works
The company says its technology applies the principles of diffractive and Fourier optics to calculate the same processor intensive mathematical functions used in computational fluid dynamics and pattern recognition. Using low-power lasers and high-resolution liquid-crystal microdisplays, calculations are performed in parallel at the speed of light.
Source: Optalysys
Conard Holton
Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.