Blackford Analysis’s core technology is MOPED, an algorithm developed in astrophysics to tackle analysis of immense datasets. The patented approach involves compressing the huge datasets while retaining all information needed to solve a problem – allowing speedups of many orders of magnitude over traditional techniques.
The technology comes from astronomical surveys, where instruments capture gigabytes of images per hour. This information is generally interpreted by comparison with models, essentially complex formulae driven by a set of parameters, which reproduce the observations.
Parameters might be the mass of a galaxy, or the distance it is from Earth, and there will be some combination of parameters that produces a modelled image that is very close to that actually seen through the telescope. Situations like this are called ‘parametric modelling problems’.
MOPED’s particular ability when solving such problems is that it speeds up the step that determines how well a given combination of parameters recreates the image.
After the initial compression, the time taken for each combination changes from being set by the number of pixels to being set by the number of parameters. If 10 parameters were to be determined by an image taken by a modern digital camera with 12 million pixels, the calculation would be more than one million times faster.
This means that problems that were too slow become possible, often solvable in real-time. As datasets become larger, and the cost of the hardware resources required to tackle them rocket, the case for MOPED is even more compelling: the powerful algorithm vastly reduces that hardware cost.
This patented technology means that no other company in the world can do what Blackford Analysis can, solving emerging issues in such an elegant and resource efficient manner.
Although MOPED can run on a standard computer, Blackford Analysis has used a number of novel hardware solutions to take off-the-shelf components and build machines with astonishing performance. In addition to our core IP, we have expertise in topics such as
- Code Optimisation
- Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques
- High Throughput Computing (HTC)
- Bayesian Inference
- Porting algorithms to GPU
- Principal Component Analysis and related techniques
Blackford Analysis’s technology was originally developed at the Institute for Astronomy, part of the University of Edinburgh. The research was carried out with the assistance of STFC (previously PPARC) funding, and commercialised by a Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept Award and Follow-on-Fund Grant.
