In a data-rich world, data-hungry companies need to run computations faster to stay in the game. But when processor speeds still adhere to the boundary of Moore’s Law, businesses need the right tools to bypass this limitation. Analytics Engines has developed a specialist capability in the acceleration of computer processing, boosting the performance of enterprise software and high-performance data analytics by multiples of hundreds, even thousands. Moore’s Law be damned.
Analytics Engines calls itself an acceleration company. Rather than building its offering around a single platform or product, the company remains solution-agnostic, bringing both hardware and software to its customers. The hardware components use the much-lauded FPGA technology (basically circuits that can be programmed to perform specific computations). Analytics Engines plugs the hardware into its customers’ systems, preloaded with a suite of library functions that can then be used to tailor the solution to the specific requirements of the project. Recent customers have included multinational names such as SAP, Philips Healthcare and Credit Suisse, all producing outstanding performance results.
An increase in speed for any company running high-end data processing is likely to benefit its bottom line. But there is an additional benefit to boosting the performance of existing infrastructure. The resulting increase in computational density typically reduces running (and presumably environmental) costs too – less servers that have to be financed or operated. A recent example for Analytics Engines was in the financial sector. Financial institutions that want to make predictions about where markets are going need models of the market that are realistically chaotic. Often the best way to analyse such randomness is through statistical methodologies that need to be repeated many times over with varying numbers to get closer to a realistic outcome. The faster they can be calculated, the more accurately the market’s movements can be predicted. Analytics Engines had been been looking at the Monte Carlo and Heston models of statistics, both of which are used by large institutions to analyse how much risk a particular financial asset carries. When applied using Analytics Engines’ accelerators, performance boosts including 165x and 1,500x were seen across different customers.
Analytics Engines has grown since inception in 2008 and expects a 60% staff increase in the coming year. The company took home an Emerging Technology Award this year from the Irish Technology Leadership Group at the Global Technology Leaders Summit at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus. A “Highly Commended” status from the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition added to the momentum gathering behind the company. With a combination of a strong technical team and a versatile product set of both hardware and software solutions, Analytics Engines is carving its way into an emerging market to bring value to some of the world’s biggest players.
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