Optalysys, a company that has long promised "optical coprocessors" enabling up to exascale performance computing in a desktop form factor, has brought on some new science advisers:
Optalysys Ltd., a start-up commercializing light-speed optical coprocessors for AI/deep learning, today announced the formation of its first Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprising experts in AI/machine learning, bioinformatics/genomics and optical pattern recognition. The inaugural SAB members include Professor Douglas Kell of The University of Manchester, Professor Timothy Wilkinson of University of Cambridge and ex-senior NASA scientist, Dr. Richard Juday.
"Collectively, these experts have deep knowledge in areas most critical to our long-term success," said Dr. Nick New, founder and director, Optalysys. "We're excited to work closely with them through the process of bringing to market our unique optical approach to super-fast, low-power computing to enable more tech innovators and scientists to create a better world."
Dr. Juday is no stranger to vaporware.
However, Optalysys has apparently found a niche for its machines: genomic analysis:
Optalysys, a U.K company seeking to commercialize optical co-processor technology, today announced completion of its Genetic Search System (GENESYS) project conducted with the prestigious Earlham Institute (EI). Citing a dramatic power saving and performance speedup for computing a traditional genomics alignment problem, Optalysys says the work demonstrates the effectiveness and maturity of its optical processing technology, which the company promotes as a post-Moore's Law alternative.
[...] The benchmark GENESYS project aligned metagenomics reads sequenced from the Human Microbiome Project Mock Community (a well characterized microbial community) against a database consisting of 20 bacterial genomes totaling 64 million base pairs. "The optical system exceeded the original targets delivering a 90 percent energy efficiency saving compared to the same test run on EI's HPC cluster, with an accuracy comparable to the highly sensitive nucleotide form of BLAST, BLASTn (part of a family of Basic Local Alignment Search Tools used to compare query sequences with a library or database of sequences)," reported Optalysys.
Technology from the GENESYS project is launching in February 2018 as a cloud-based platform to a closed beta program of a select group of genomic institutes including EI, the University of Manchester, Oregon State University, and Zealquest Scientific Technology Co. in cooperation with the Shanghai Bioinformatics Center, Chinese Academy of Science.
Previously: Computing With Lasers Could Power Up Genomics and AI
Related Stories
As the cost of sequencing a person's genome plummets, demand for the computing power needed to make sense of the genetic information is growing. Nicholas New hopes some of it will be worked on by a processor that parses data using laser light, built by his U.K. startup, Optalysys.
New says his company's exotic approach to crunching data can dramatically upgrade a conventional computer by taking over some of the most demanding work in applications such as genomics and simulating weather. "The grunt work can be done by the optics," he says.
Researchers have worked on the idea of using optics rather than electronics to process data for decades, with little commercial traction. But New argues that it is now needed because manufacturers such as Intel admit that they can't keep improving conventional chips at the pace they used to
takyon: Optalysys is a company that claims it will scale to petaflops and exaflops in the near future using desktop amounts of power. However, their technology has been described as a coprocessor so it isn't clear what kind of operations it can perform. Much has been made of its partnership with The Genome Analysis Center (TGAC).
The article also mentions LightOn, which published this paper. Optical and quantum computing are both being examined for their potential to enhance machine learning. Google is researching the quantum approach.
Optalysys claims to have implemented a convolutional neural network (CNN) using its optical supercomputer/coprocessor:
Optalysys says they have built the world's first implementation of a convolutional neural network using its optical coprocessor.
The UK-based company has developed optical computing hardware that uses lasers and spatial light modulators (SLMs) to perform complex numerical processing at extremely high speeds and using very little power. The technology has been implemented as an HPC coprocessor, which is meant to be attached to a conventional computer – a desktop system or a server. The company's first prototype was announced in 2014.
Although not much detail has been provided on this latest application of the technology, Optalysys says they have implemented a CNN based on the MNIST dataset of hand-drawn numerals. The dataset is comprised of 60,000 training characters and 10,000 testing characters. According to the company, its optical laser technology enables them to process this model several orders of magnitude faster than conventional electronic hardware and does so at a fraction of the energy consumption.
[...] Optalysys is one of a growing number of startups that is applying optical computing to AI. Those companies include Lighton, Light Intelligence, Fathom Computing, and Lightmatter. (We covered that latter two here and here.) All are using various forms of optical technology to encode neural networks and are promising huge speedups and much better energy efficiency than traditional CPU/GPU-based machine learning.
MNIST database. Press release.
Previously: Computing With Lasers Could Power Up Genomics and AI
Optalysys, Back in the (Press Release) News
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday February 15 2018, @02:20AM (1 child)
Uh huh. How long until a front page story saying that their researchers (or lab assistants, etc.) were actually "commercializing light-speed optical coprocessors for mining cryptocoins..."
I am also waiting for that headline, except involving "quantum computing."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 15 2018, @02:28AM
It could be true. Nobody knows how broad or narrow their optical sauce is.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:55AM (1 child)
You do know that "ex senior" really just means "now senile", don't you?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 15 2018, @12:28PM
It could be vandalism for all we know. The source is a geoblocked YouTube video.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]