INDUSTRY

MNB Technologies announces the receipt of a U.S. Navy research contract to develop a new class of field-portable “supercomputer” based on conventional notebook computers equipped with plug-in reconfigurable accelerators and a revolutionary new use model. Sponsored by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Pawtuxent River Maryland, this contract will result in a new class of high‐performance computer that is equally at home in both military and civilian applications. Intended for “disadvantaged” users, the new system will capture the power of high-performance reconfigurable computing while maintaining very reasonable overall cost by heavily using commercial off the shelf (COTS) systems and major components. MNB’s Chief Technology Officer, Nick Granny said: “Today’s military is heavily dependent on high-performance computing for a wide range of applications including intelligence, mission planning, and simulation & training. Many of these applications take room-sized computers that cannot be deployed aboard ship, in aircraft, or with expeditionary forces. By making a fundamental change in the way high-performance reconfigurable computing is used and delivered, we are making it possible to move the computer to the front-lines alongside the Warfighter. The result will be better and faster decisions, improved mission planning, and higher quality training. By improving the training-planning-decision execution process fewer lives, both military and civilian, will be lost and collateral damage can be minimized.” “There are quite a few scientific applications for this new computational paradigm”, quoting MNB’s Chief Scientist, Martina Barnas. “Very often taking the computer to the experiment can save organizations a lot of time and money. But until now it was extremely difficult to transport a large computer cluster to where geologists, oceanographers, infectious disease researchers, disaster management experts, and meteorologists do their field work. These systems will also be sufficiently compact, robust, and affordable to allow their use in developing countries where the infrastructure to support traditional high-performance computing is rare to non-existent.” The project is anticipated to take 30 to 36 months and will foster significant advances in the use of hardware acceleration as a deployable service, automated system configuration & service discovery, and new approaches to fault detection/bypassing. The project is an excellent example of how the partnership of the Department of Defense and Small Business provides new advances that equally benefits both the government and private sectors. This R&D project is partially funded by a grant from the State of Indiana, Indiana 21st Century Science & Technology Fund. In this effort MNB will work closely with other small businesses in related fields including: Accord Solutions (Critical Technology Protection, San Diego, CA), Pico Computing (Reconfigurable Computing Modules, Seattle, WA), and Impulse Accelerated Technologies (FPGA Development Tools, Kirkland, WA). The list of small business collaborators is expected to grow as the technology evolves to embrace multiple runtime platforms and additional development languages. MNB Technologies is a leading provider of research and development services in the field of high-performance reconfigurable, adaptive, and embedded systems. MNB serves the technical computing, information security, advanced visualization, and life‐sciences communities. MNB is a service disabled veteran owned small business headquartered in Bloomington, IN. MNB is a service disabled veteran owned small business and an equal opportunity employer.