
Published in Military & Aerospace Electronics
NASHUA, N.H. - Rugged computers for the warfighter are hitting the market today with broad new capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI), innovative ruggedization and thermal management, distributed architectures for tight packaging for deployment at the edge, and a pursuit of new and emerging open-systems industry standards in efforts to "future-proof" the latest designs.
The innovations don't stop there. Not only are enabling technologies for AI like fast general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and multi-core central processing units (CPUs) taking the market by storm, but systems designers also are investigating future uses of additive manufacturing and 3D printing to tackle tomorrow's thermal-management and packaging issues.
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In rugged computing, "the hardest problem to solve is thermal management," says Curtiss-Wright's Dechiaro. "As processors get faster they tend to generate more heat. What's available on the platform drives what we can do. Liquid flow-through on the chassis can cool everything on the platform -- if it's available."
Liquid cooling "takes a tremendous amount of work to get that on a platform," points out Dominic Perez, chief technology officer at Curtiss Wright. Using liquid, thermally efficient though it may be, is available only in selected environments.