GE SBC624, SBC625, DSP281, DSP283, IPN250 Brochure

GE

Intelligent Platforms

High

Performance

Embedded

Computing

introduction

Parallelism has been at the heart of supercomputing since the term was first used in the 1960s. Today, ­supercomputing has, in many instances, become high performance computing but instead of vast rooms full of mainframe computers all working together on the same problem, high performance computing sees the deploy-

ment of numbers of server-class machines, each featuring multiple high performance­

processors configured in parallel.

And now, high performance computing has come to the world of embedded systems – and, especially, to the systems being developed and deployed by the world’s armed forces. To address the most demanding and sophisticated applications, such as ISR and electronic warfare, high performance embedded computing – HPEC – uses the power, not just of multiple single board computers working together, but also of multi-core and many-core processors.

Unique challenges

But HPEC in the military arena presents a unique set of challenges in two key areas as a result of how and where these solutions will be deployed. The first of these is the need to ensure 100% reliability – in what are often, literally, life-and-death situations – in the face of extremes of shock, vibration, temperature

and contaminants. The second is that, increasingly, these solutions are being deployed in environments that are small, and that need to minimize weight, power and heat.

Both are fields in which GE Intelligent Platforms is an acknowledged leader. No other company has GE’s pedigree in the devel-

GE’s HPEC Center of Excellence

GE has established a High Performance Embedded Computing Center of Excellence (CoE) specifically to support customer demand for high TRL (technology readiness level) COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solutions that can shorten time-to-market, minimize cost and help to eliminate program risk, allowing prime contractors, system integrators and OEMs to focus on value-add and create competitive advantage. The Center takes advantage of GE’s COTS Rugged Systems (CRS) capability to support the rapid deployment of systems to the field.

The HPEC CoE also provides a focus for the future development of a range of powerful, flexible products and solutions for military/aerospace embedded computing.

opment of systems that are truly rugged, capable of withstanding the rigors of deployment in the harshest environments. And no other company is able to better GE’s expertise in developing HPEC solutions that are small, lightweight, consume minimal power and dissipate minimal heat.

GE is well-known for its ability to develop and deliver leading-edge single board computers, multiprocessors, high speed switches and so on. Much less well known is GE’s ability as a systems company, able to provide complete, rugged, ready-to-run subsystems – and a broad range of supporting services.

Meeting new realities

It’s not just about hardware. In an era of acquisition reform, without the luxury of extended, government-funded development cycles, the onus on development exists with the supplier. To meet these new realities, GE provides a complete development environment – AXIS – that reduces development time and cost and accelerates time to market.

There’s more to GE’s HPEC offering than just hardware and software, however. GE also has an unmatched understanding of, and commitment to, long term support – recognition of the multi-year (multi-decade, even) lifecycle of the typical military program. That understanding and commitment is backed by one of the world’s most respected, most secure companies.

GE Intelligent Platforms has been a long time champion of COTS – commercial of-the-shelf – solutions, because of what they bring to customers in terms of faster access to new technologies, high technology readiness levels (TRL), ease of interoperability through the use of open standards, reduced program risk and lower lifetime cost of ownership. Today, GE

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readily works with customers to create custom variants of those solutions – variants that combine the advantages of COTS with the benefits of custom development.

GE is in the business of developing innovative solutions all the time, every time – for the long term. In an unpredictable world, only

a company of GE’s size, stature, resources and experience can work with customers to anticipate needs – and minimize the impact of the unforeseen.

At the heart of everything GE does is the deep understanding of what is most important to customers: bringing value-added, differentiated, high performance, reliable and cost-effective solutions to market in the fastest time, at the lowest cost and with the minimum of risk – thereby creating competitive advantage.

GE knows that this goal is only achieved through a mutual investment in the relationship and a shared commitment to success.

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software

Overarching GE’s comprehensive high performance embedded computing offering is AXIS, an integrated, sophisticated yet easy to use software development environment that has led to software development time being halved, and to software testing beginning 30% sooner than would have been achieved with a ‘hand-crafted’ solution.

AXIS reduces the time taken to develop, test, debug and optimize complex DSP software applications based on multiprocessor platforms. Because of the high level of hardware abstraction it provides, it requires little or

no developer knowledge of the underlying platform, freeing developers to focus on the application. As such, it reduces program risk; it increases productivity; it reduces costs; and it reduces time-to-market, creating competitive advantage.

Easy, fast, cost-effective

Not only this: AXIS is highly portable, allowing the easy, fast and cost-effective migration of a software solution to multiple hardware platforms as well as simplifying technology insertion during the lifetime of a program.

AXIS provides support for GE’s latest multicore and many-core hardware platforms including single board computers featuring 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processors as well as those featuring the latest Power Architecture processors from Freescale, and those featuring NVIDIA’s CUDA GPGPU (general purpose processing on graphics processing units) technology, providing customers with a highly integrated hardware and software platform that uniquely enables them to take maximum advantage of the enormous benefits of the latest processing technologies.

As well as support for OpenVPX, AXIS provides support for VME and VXS systems.

Tuning to meet performance requirements

The AXISPro software suite includes an integrated graphical user interface. AXISView provides tools for application development and system visualization. The developer exploits an iterative application development cycle allowing the user to benchmark routines and tune the application to meet performance requirements.

In addition, AXISFlow provides a high performance interprocessor communication library for high throughput , low latency data movement across multiple fabrics (PCI Express®, Gigabit Ethernet , 10 Gigabit Ethernet , InfiniBand and Serial RapidIO etc.) scaling from one to many CPU cores and nodes across a single board, multiple boards in and multiple system chassis.

If open standards are required, then AXISmpi offers an embedded computing focused MPI library that will operate across heterogeneous systems.

AXISLib provides DSP and math function libraries to support very high performance signal and data processing routines with a standard VSIPL interface as well as a faster proprietary API for optimum performance and portability across multiple processor platforms. Generic C versions of the libraries are also available.

Software: The GE Advantage

6High performance, low overhead RDMA capability using AXISFlow and OFED software stack.

6Open standard VSIPL and MPI support.

6AXISView GUI enables system visualization and rapid prototyping.

6Signal processing algorithm optimization services.

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TO FIND OUT MORE: http://defense.ge-ip.com/products/axis-multiprocessing-software/c153

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