Cognifiber revolutionizes the field of edge computing

Cognifiber is planning nothing less than a revolution in artificial intelligence. The company has made a name for itself by producing standalone accelerators for photonic artificial intelligence. Now the market is to be further improved. While the focus has so far been on silicon as a raw material for the production of corresponding hardware, this is now to be replaced by an apparently far more suitable material – glass. By miniaturizing its in-fiber photonics, the startup claims it can push server-grade capabilities to the edge of their performance.

Next-Generation Photonic Computing

Since its inception, the young company has focused on photonic computing, which goes a step further than most current commercial applications that use photonics only to communicate across racks in the data center. Using the shift from silicon to glass, the company aims to enable so-called edge computing. According to the startup, the premiere of the glass-based photonic chip should ensure that it was possible to reduce the original design of previous solutions to “a fraction.” The resulting 4U server is also said to be easily deployable in offices themselves, thanks to a height of just 18cm. This could not only save companies money, but also eliminate the need to support external data centers.

Photonic glass chips offer many advantages

But what are the advantages of so-called edge computing anyway? Once you decouple from data centers, you don’t just save money. On top of that, you don’t have to rely on cloud solutions, which can sometimes be unreliable. Especially in the area of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, it is an advantage to have the right hardware in your own office. After all, these applications require the lowest possible latencies and reliable performance. Thanks to its small size, Cognifiber’s latest solution envisions more than just the traditional office as a place of use.

It is possible that the space-saving use of glass instead of silicon could also be integrated into smart meters and home assistants in the future. Even in the field of mobility, the startup believes in its revolution. For example, they cite automated trains and connected vehicles as possible areas of application. On this, Dr. Eyal Cohen, Co-founder & CEO of Cognifiber, says:

“Anything that generates huge amounts of data every second, such as connected vehicles, automated trains, or fleet management of large transportation drones, can respond to events in real time without relying on data centers.”

More performance and cost savings

“The downsizing potential with glass-based photonics chips combined with our proprietary fibers promises to push servers to the edge with outstanding performance, eliminating many existing bottlenecks while dramatically reducing power consumption.”

Cohen further promises. In the process, the startup from Israel apparently has plenty of plans. After all, the performance of server solutions should increase by 100 times. On this, Ze’ev Zalevsky, co-founder and CTO of Cognifiber, says.

“The combination of photonic glass chips advances our edge solution to bring fast AI and machine learning locally to edge devices that are limited in capacity and performance allowance.”

We are excited to see what impact the invention will have on the market.