October 19, 2003, Updated September 13, 2012

The EnLight electro-optic processor operates at the unprecedented speed of 8 tera (8,000 billion) calculation operations per second – one thousand times faster than any known Digital Signal Processor. A small Israel company called Lenslet has developed a revolutionary electro-optic processor which operates at the unprecedented speed of 8 tera (8,000 billion) calculation operations per second – one thousand times faster than any known Digital Signal Processor.

The new processor, called the EnLight, will be used for intelligence, for the analysis of intelligence, weather forecasting, airport security, and for multimedia, cellular and video compression purposes. Experts predict that its capabilities have the potential to change the face of the military, intelligence and homeland security industries.

Despite its amazing processing speed, the EnLight is no larger than a regular electronic card, but its capability is equal to a network of large and powerful super-computers.

Lenslet’s first optic processor was unveiled last week at the MILCOM military technology exhibit in Boston. The product, the EnLight256 is the first in a line of ultra-fast Digital Signal Processors.

The processor was developed over three years by the company’s research and development team in Israel, with the support of a group of well-known professors in the optics, physics and signal processing fields.

“The breakthrough became possible as a result of adventurous, original and different thinking,” said Shlomo Eisenbach, deputy director general of development in the company.

The EnLight256 can be used for voice analysis, face recognition, image processing, and other applications. The device will improve detection and extraction of image and audio features as well as other parameters like behavioral analysis, and will allow reliable automated screening of massive amount of data and for identifying potential threats.

The EnLight256 architecture is particularly a powerful correlation engine and therefore can significantly improve performance of such systems at an affordable cost.

“This quantum leap in computation performance, enabled by optical processing, opens the door to new capabilities in the battlefield of the future, creating strategic implications. This new development will revolutionize the nature of warfare with an effect similar to those caused by the appearance of the tank or the airplane,” said Major-General (Ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, former head of the R&D Directorate of
the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

Some potential benefits include enhanced communications in noisy channels,
multi-channel interference cancellation, multi-protocol receiver (SDR), improved resolution and image for SAR radars, digital beam forming, enhanced signal detection in EW/RWR systems, real time, multi channel video compression
and processing at high image resolutions (H.264 compression for multi HDTV channels), etc. In the area of Homeland Security: improved throughput and detection accuracy for baggage scanning and multi sensor threat analysis.

“Leading global companies have identified the previously inconceivable potential of Lenslet’s product and are examining innovative systems based on the EnLight platform,” says Aviram Sariel, CEO and Founder of Lenslet Ltd.
“Today is a historical occasion, a breakthrough in optical designs and the beginning of a new era – of which we at Lenslet, are all very proud.”

Lenslet was established in 1999 and headquartered in Herzlia Pituach. The company currently employs over 32 professionals, most of them scientists and engineers with advanced degrees. Lenslet specializes in the design, development and marketing of the industry’s fastest and most advanced Optical Digital Signal
Processing Engines (ODSPE).

Lenslet was created with the vision of making optical processing a commercial reality. After 30 years of optical processing being limited to academic laboratories, Lenslet recruited world leaders in optical design and digital signal processing to support its efforts in overcoming basic technological challenges, which previously prevented these past implementations. Lenslet’s team has patented its innovative technology by developing the world’s first commercially available optical digital signal processor.

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