Lenslet's EnLight Optical Processor combines optics, silicon, communication interfaces, and development tools in a standard electronic board format. EnLight 64 delivers 240 Giga MAC ops/sec. It's said to be the first programmable optical processor. Enlight 256, under development, reportedly boosts standard DSP performance by three orders of magnitude, and said to achieve 1,000x faster operation. Israel-based Lenslet Ltd. says the EnLight256 carries a specification of up to 8-Tera (1,012) multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations per second, or 8,000 GMAC/s.

In addition, EnLight256 is a general-purpose, fixed-point ODSP with an embedded optical core. It consists of three elements: vector matrix multiplier (VMM) that performs its ultra-fast vector-matrix operations; vector processor unit (VPU) that handles 128 Giga operations per second; and standard DSP (TI's TMS320C64xx) for control and scalar processing.

Also, software for EnLight is developed using three main tools: Matlab APL bit exact simulator, APL Studio bit exact and cycle exact simulator, and APL Studio Emulator. These tools ensure a smooth development path starting from the floating-point algorithm to running and debugging code.

Lenslet adds that EnLight targets computationally intense applications, such as video compression, video encoders, security (baggage scanning and multi-sensor threat analysis), and defense and communication systems. It can be applied either as a system-embedded accelerator or a standalone processor. Potential benefits of the optical processor include enhanced communications in noisy channels, multi-channel interference cancellation, and replacement of existing multi-DSP boards. www.lenslet.com

• First programmable optical processor
• Combines optics, silicon, communications, and tools in standard board
• Specified at up to 8 Tera (1,012) multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations per second
• Software tools allow smooth development path