First customer of new system configuration to realize unprecedented performance and I/O rates from a single system comprised of both FPGAs and PowerPCs -- Mercury Computer Systems announced the availability of its reconfigurable computing variant of the Mercury PowerStream 7000 multicomputer. The PowerStream 7000 FCN (FPGA Compute Node) can incorporate up to 69 Xilinx seven-million-gate field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) connected by a RapidIO switch fabric, enabling twice the processing performance in the same system footprint. Mercury Computer Systems recently delivered the PowerStream 7000 FCN to Lockheed Martin for use with the Aegis Weapon System it developed for the U.S. Navy. "Processing speed is critical to the sailors who rely on our systems when they sail in harm's way," said Jim Judd, Director of Processor and Digital Systems Design at Lockheed Martin's MS2 business. "In addition to speed, we continue to seek solutions that use less space on ships and take advantage of open architecture design." The reconfigurable computing option includes up to 46 10-Gigabit fiber connections directly to the FPGAs, in addition to the 320 Gigabits/s of I/O available in the base configuration. With this combination of massive computing and I/O capability, the PowerStream 7000 FCN is designed to solve some of the toughest signal and image processing challenges in high-end intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance applications. "Customers deploying advanced applications in a number of areas have found FPGAs to be a great processing complement to improve performance within their target size, weight, or power envelope," said Craig Lund, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mercury Computer Systems. "We are really excited about the customer interest we have seen in this reconfigurable system for synthetic aperture radar, ground-moving target indicator applications, low-latency IP packet analysis and reconstruction for signals intelligence, and other areas." The base configuration of the PowerStream 7000 system uses PowerPC 7447A processors connected by a RapidIO switch fabric. The PowerStream 7000 FCN configuration can be integrated for front-end signal processing in the same system with PowerPC processors, using PowerStream FCN boards. The FCN board has three 7-million-gate Xilinx FPGAs, each with SRAM, DRAM, a dedicated RapidIO link, and high-speed copper links both to the front panel and to the other FPGAs. Two of the FPGAs also have a 10-Gigabit fiber connection to the front panel, which can be used for 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The power of the FPGAs is accessed through Mercury's FCN Development Kit (FDK). The FDK provides the RapidIO interface, multi-ported memory interfaces, I/O interfaces, and an on-chip fabric to connect them all. The components work together to provide high-bandwidth data paths across the entire chip and memory mapping across the RapidIO fabric. The PowerStream 7000 FCN configuration is available today. For more information, visit its Web site or contact Mercury at (866) 627-6951.