CHEMISTRY

CSP Inc. MultiComputer Division, a leading supplier of embedded high-performance cluster computing systems, announced it has shipped FastCluster 2942 blades to Lockheed Martin for the System Development and Demonstration (SD&D) phase of the Advanced Hawkeye (AHE) program. The Advanced Hawkeye will have computerized radar, Identification Friend or Foe and electronic surveillance sensors to provide early warning, threat analysis against potentially hostile air and surface targets. The AHE team will use the FastCluster 2942 blades in their next generation radar, which will begin to replace the current AN/APS-145 airborne radar in 2010. During the SD&D phase the Navy will use five radar systems for qualification, reliability and flight-testing. The FastCluster 2942 blade was selected for this program because of the outstanding performance provided by the system design. Utilizing a 1 GHz Motorola 7457 high performance, low power, 32-bit PowerPC microprocessor with a full 128-bit implementation of AltiVec(TM) technology and a 1 GB memory subsystem the blade delivers 32 GFLOPS of computational power, twice that of previous generation FastCluster products. Maintaining a compact 6U VME footprint, the FastCluster 2942 blade is designed with four processors directly on the motherboard, eliminating mezzanines, in order to maximize airflow and cooling. This dense packaging is ideal for space conscious military applications. In collaboration with Lockheed Martin, CSPI will produce a rugged version of this product to meet the environmental conditions required for airborne radar. Available with a choice of system software the FastCluster 2942 blade can be configured to take advantage of the open source Linux operating system complete with GNU toolkit or the industry standard VxWorks real-time operating system and the Tornado II development tools suite. Both software environments include CSPI's highly optimized ISSPL-ALT and VSIPL math libraries and the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library for interprocessor communications. The FastCluster software environment promotes cross-platform compatibility as well as the design of portable code for rapid development and improved time to deployment. "Supporting a design strategy that draws upon open source software, conformance to standards and enabling technologies is key to reducing the cost of ownership for our defense customers," stated William E. Bent, Jr., General Manager and Vice President of CSPI MultiComputer Division. The new FastCluster 2942 blade is currently in production and available for delivery 60 days after receipt of order (ARO). More information on the FastCluster 2942 blade is available in a data sheet on the CSPI web site at http://www.cspi.com/multicomputer/products/2942/2942.pdf.