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

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.

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.

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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high performance embedded computing

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.

defense.ge-ip.com/hpec

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software

Overarching GE’s comprehensive

high performance embedded

computing offering is AXIS, an

integrated, sophisticated yet

easy to use software develop-

ment 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

th

4

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 hard- ware 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.

®

,

04

high performance embedded computing

Software: The GE Advantage

6

High performance, low overhead RDMA capability using AXISFlow and OFED

software stack.

6

Open standard VSIPL and MPI support.

6

AXISView GUI enables system visualization and rapid prototyping.

6

Signal processing algorithm optimization services.

TO FIND OUT MORE:

http://defense.ge-ip.com/products/axis-multiprocessing-software/c153

defense.ge-ip.com/hpec

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