Program will benchmark competing HPEC system architectures for cost-effective COTS-based radar processing solutions
ASHBURN, Va. - March 25, 2015 - Curtiss-Wright Corporation's (NYSE: CW) Defense Solutions division announced that it has been contracted to participate in a US Air Force organized Next-Generation Radar evaluation program. The goal of this program is to assess the capability of cost-effective commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software to perform airborne radar signal processing. This assessment is being performed at Curtiss-Wright by running and optimizing SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and GMTI (Ground Moving Target Indicator) benchmarks on Curtiss-Wright COTS hardware solutions. These benchmarks, which were provided by the US Air Force, leverage advances in commercial high-performance computing (HPC) software, such as OpenCL, VSIPL, FFTW, and MPI. Under the program, Curtiss-Wright and a select group of COTS vendors will each benchmark their proposed multiprocessor High-Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) Radar processing architecture based on specifications and requirements provided by the US Air Force.
"We are proud to have been selected to participate in this exciting Next-Generation Radar evaluation program," said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Defense Solutions. "Using today's high-performance open architecture hardware, it's now possible to design whole new classes of rugged deployed HPEC solutions that deliver all of the proven cost savings and long lifecycle benefits of COTS technology while elevating radar processing performance to levels never before achievable."
Under the program, Curtiss-Wright will benchmark and optimize its High-Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC)-based radar processing system design. The Curtiss-Wright design is based on the company's Fabric40™ rugged OpenVPX™ board and chassis products that deliver the industry's first complete end-to-end system approach for integrating the 40 Gbps high-speed fabrics into aerospace and defense HPEC applications. Curtiss-Wright Fabric40 system elements provide a complete system solution, including single board computers (SBC), DSP and FPGA engines, GPU processors, network switches, and backplanes.
HPEC Software Suite
To help speed time to market and mitigate design risk, Curtiss-Wright, working with leading third-party software partners, also provides a fully integrated HPEC Development Environment. Based on proven best-of-breed software tools leveraged from the commercial supercomputing industry, Curtiss-Wright's HPEC development and debug tools ease the application design process.
The Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions facility located in Ashburn, Va. will design and manufacture the HPEC Next-Generation Radar processing subsystem to be benchmarked under the program.
About Curtiss-Wright Corporation
Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE:CW) is a global innovative company that delivers highly engineered, critical function products and services to the commercial, industrial, defense and energy markets. Building on the heritage of Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothers, Curtiss-Wright has a long tradition of providing reliable solutions through trusted customer relationships. The company employs approximately 9,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit www.curtisswright.com.
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