It's been a busy period for Valencia-HQed photon microchip developer iPronics. Since Tech.eu reported in July on its €3.7 million round, the academic spinoff has managed to finalise a commercial product, while exhausting only six months of its runway.
Initial shipments of iPronics' general-purpose photonic microchip, dubbed SmartLight Processor, were recently delivered to EU and US clients.
The reconfigurable chip, which utilises IP from Universitat Politècnica de València, is poised to bring about faster and more powerful architectures in several advanced computing segments.
Photonic chips employ laser photons instead of electrons to transmit data in internal computing systems. As light travels faster, this is expected to lead to multiple advances in areas like LIDAR, deep learning, quantum computing, 5G signal processing, and DNA sequencing.
The team at iPronics focused on building a user-friendly software orchestration kit for controlling its product's photonic circuits. It's hoped this should let developers create highly tailored use cases with "plug and play compatibility".
Crucially, the software controls should also ease the path to deploying optical processors. Lower costs and 14-day lead times should make it far easier for development teams to design and execute tech containing its chip.
iPronics CEO, Mark Halfman, commented: "For a company that was founded just prior to the pandemic, it is almost unprecedented to move so swiftly from development to shipping our first commercial orders supporting a variety of applications.
"Today’s announcement is a testament to the vision of the company’s founders and the dedication of the entire team. This is both a watershed moment for the photonics industry and an exciting time for the company.”
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