Optical DSPs promise tera-ops performance

October 10, 2001 | Source: EE Times

An optically based digital signal processing engine (ODSPE) that has the potential to take DSPs from the current giga-operations-per-second (Gops) limit to tera (trillion) operations per second (Tops) by 2005 has been demonstrated by Lenslet Labs of Israel.
The company has already demonstrated an 8-Tops, 20-watt device. Using conventional DSPs to get that performance would require 40 FPGAs, according to the company.

The technology uses high-speed optical processing — altering the characteristics of an optical element, and patented algorithms for each transform.

The tecbnology is targeted at wireless and wireline communications, along with JPEG, MPEG, machine-vision and voice-recognition applications, with products expected by 2004.