Thales uses Gemalto tech to enhance biometric matching performance, protect environment

Thales is applying technologies from the aerospace industry to enhance its Biometric Matching System (BMS) performance and lower detrimental impact on the environment by requiring up to 75 percent less servers and energy overall, the company announced.

The Biometric Matching System leverages Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology from Gemalto, a Thales company, for parallel data processing which limits the carbon footprint and reduces by half the number of servers needed. Thales notes its BMS is at the center of government digital identification systems that need real-time action, such as Entry/Exit systems used by border agencies, because it delivers low latency biometric data processing, scalability and reduced costs.

By integrating Gemalto’s commercial off-the-shelf FPGA technology, which was designed for ultra-low latency applications in high performance computing (HPC) environments in financial and scientific industries, the BMS ensures interoperability and enables government agencies to process millions of biometric database records in one to two seconds.

The technology has been used by Gemalto to match digital signatures based on hundreds of millions of biometric fingerprint templates.

Gemalto’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) can be used for processing, editing, searching, retrieving, and storing fingerprint, palm print, face and iris images and biographic subject records, among others.

By leveraging FPGA, ABIS helps government agencies deploy multi-biometric solutions with enhanced matching accuracy and speed, the company says.

“Our FPGA-based solution can cut data center investment and space overall by more than a half, whilst reducing CO2 emissions by around 50 percent. Gemalto technology brings new options for governments wishing to prioritize environmental sustainability, without in any way impacting national security,” says Youzec Kurp, SVP Identity & Biometric Solutions at Thales. “The alternative of a pure Central Processing Unit based approach for biometric data matching requires massive computing capacity – even, in some cases, up to four times more servers than Gemalto’s approach – to perform the same transaction.”

Thales is also using Gemalto technology to deliver a digital license solution in Queensland, Australia. Thales completed its €4.8 billion acquisition of Gemalto last April.

Article Topics

ABIS - Automated Biometric Identification System  |  AFIS  |  biometric data  |  biometric database  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  Gemalto  |  Thales