CHELMSFORD, Mass., 2 August 2006. Mercury Computer Systems Inc.'s reconfigurable computing variant of the Mercury PowerStream 7000 multicomputer, the PowerStream 7000 FCN (FPGA Compute Node), can accommodate 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 has delivered the PowerStream 7000 FCN to Lockheed Martin for use with the Aegis Weapon System it developed for the U.S. Navy.
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. 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.
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.
