Mercury Computer Systems and PNNL use gaming technology to develop national security solutions

CHELMSFORD, Mass., 29 June 2007. The same computing power used in millions of game consoles may soon help tackle computational challenges in national security, cyberspace, and bioinformatics. Mercury Computer Systems Inc. and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are collaborating to apply multicore technology, such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and the Cell broadband engine (BE) processor, to these critical applications.

Mercury and PNNL will develop a new Computational Center of Excellence, with contributions from each including hardware, software, and middleware, newly developed algorithms, and dedicated personnel.

"We're excited to be working with PNNL, and about the possibilities of applying multicore computing technology to enable the development of economically viable computing solutions to previously intractable problems," says Jay Bertelli, president and CEO of Mercury Computer Systems Inc. "Early results from our collaboration show that, together, we can analyze streaming data in real time, which has been a critical challenge for data-intensive computing. Our goal is to open the door for new applications."

In the areas of defense and security, the new computing power could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to partially analyze incoming data onboard. Equipment on such platforms needs to be minimal in size, weight, and power. Multicore processors consume relatively low amounts of power while processing complex and large amounts of information.

In addition to software development, PNNL and Mercury will organize workshops, consortiums, demonstration projects, and prototyping of data-intensive computing appliances for both government and industry. Mercury and PNNL intend to expand membership in the Center of Excellence to investigate computer technologies that include combinations of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), multicores such as the Cell BE processor, GPUs, analog-to-digital converters, and software tools required for high-productivity development.