Near-instantaneous and low power, the uses of analog optical transform computing date back to the 1960s.
Bringing this kind of optical computing into the digital world has always been a challenge. Making a digitally programmable photonic transform system has been the goal of Optalysys since our founding in 2013.
The combination of silicon photonics, free-space optical processing and digital electronics that makes up our Etile processing core is a radically different yet extremely powerful approach that not only achieves this goal, it does so in a way suited to direct integration into the most challenging digital tasks.
Designed to tackle problems that cannot be addressed by electronic solutions, the current and future information processing capacity of optics is unmatched by any other technology.
Formed through private partnerships with Cambridge University, Cambridge Correlators was created to leverage the advances being made in high speed Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) microdisplays and the optical pattern recognition technology developed during Dr Nick New’s PhD.
Cambridge Correlators enters into a working partnership created with Optalysys co-founder Robert Todd, specialist in precision optical components and system assembly, allowing rapid prototyping and advances in Fourier optical hardware.
Be it ruggedised optical correlators capable of withstanding extreme environments, optical partial derivative functions for numerical solvers, or academic kits for universities, Cambridge Correlators produced a range of Fourier optical systems and developed new methods for image recognition, coded aperture imaging and motion tracking.
Optalysys was formed as a spin-off of Cambridge Correlators.
The explicit intent of Optalysys is to leverage the colossal parallel processing capability of the optical Fourier transform (OFT) to deliver low-power high-performance computing solutions.
Our aim has always been to make Fourier optics an aspect of programmable computing, allowing the advantages of the OFT to be applied to processing digital data.
Optalysys partnered with The Earlham Institute to create a Genetic Search System through a 2.5 year project that was successfully awarded £0.5M from the government body Innovate UK
The optical approach delivered 90% energy savings and 20x faster processing.
Optalysys completed a seedling project in collaboration with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2017 exploring light-speed mathematical processing.
A major project led by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to develop next generation numerical weather prediction.
The rise of AI accelerators and the unique potential of optical transforms in accelerating convolution operations leads to a need for greater integration between optical computing and conventional CMOS.
Optalysys begins exploring silicon photonics as a technology that will allow us to bridge this gap through tight co-integration of microscale optical circuits with digital systems.
Optalysys applications research identifies FHE as a potential candidate for optical acceleration based on the deep relationship between convolution operations as applied in AI and the large polynomial multiplications used in FHE.
Initial experimentation and testing quickly leads to an explosion in Optalysys research and development directed towards FHE applications.
Our ongoing applications research and engagement with other entities in the FHE sector orients Optalysys fully towards FHE as our primary market for optically-enhanced transform operations.
Development begins in earnest on bringing a dedicated FHE hardware acceleration platform to market.
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