Photonic FPGA startup appoints former Xilinx exec as CEO
Startup iPronics (Valencia, Spain), which has developed a general-purpose software-programmable photonic processor, has appointed Mark Halfman as CEO.
iPronics has developed a photonic IC architecture inspired by the electronic FPGA. The photonic array is a hexagonal mesh of two-dimensional photonic waveguides that incorporate programmable Mach-Zehnder interferometers. A large variety of functions can be performed on seven-cell hexagonal array.
Prior to joining iPronics Halfman was vice president of business development for five years at Qualcomm following its acquisition of Pixtronx where he had served as vice president of business development. Prior to that Halfman spent ten years in a variety of positions with FPGA vendor Xilinx.
The company received €3.7 million in a seed round of venture capital funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners.
Early access
The general-purpose nature of iPronics’ offering promises to enable commercial use of the technology with advantages of faster computation at reduced power consumption and latency but with faster time to market than application-specific designs with lower total cost.
The SmartLight photonic processor, with 64 I/O ports and operating on 1500nm to 1600nm wavelength light is due to be available in 2023. The company is presently running a beta-testing and early access program
The company, a spinoff of the Technical University of Valencia, was founded by Dr. Daniel Pérez- López, Professor José Capmany and Iñaki Berenguer.
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