GE Intelligent Platforms announced the rugged IBX400 6U OpenVPX InfiniBand Switch Fabric Module. Designed to bring leading edge commercial data center connectivity and performance to the most demanding military and aerospace applications, the IBX400 further enhances GE’s broad offering for High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC).
It also complements GE’s existing GBX460 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Fabric Module, offering an alternative, higher performance InfiniBand-based solution for customers who need increased data plane bandwidth with lower latency.
With its wide operating temperature range and high resistance to shock and vibration, the IBX400 enables the deployment of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities across a broad range of manned and un-manned airborne, ground and naval platforms in the harshest environments. It can provide a significant boost – at minimal cost - to the performance of radar and sonar systems as well as image-, signal- and data processing applications.
The IBX400 provides high speed data connectivity to GE’s rugged MOSA (Modular Open Systems Architecture) board level solution sets that include the latest RDMA-enabled Intel® Core™i7 single board computers, multiprocessors, NVIDIA® CUDA™ GPUs and PMC/XMC carrier cards. Applications can easily be moved from Linux® server or desk-top machines onto these deployable modules to provide greatly increased computing performance where it is needed most.
GE’s end-to-end solutions provide shorter time to solution, lower technical risk and lower cost of ownership. System integrators and end users can deploy tried and tested software building blocks such as the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and OpenMPI high performance interprocess communication (IPC) middlewares from the OpenFabrics Alliance as well as modules from other open source HPC (High Performance Computing) community projects.
“The growth in both the number and complexity of deployed sensors – sensors which enable the collection of huge amounts of data that need to be turned rapidly into actionable information – is overwhelming the capability of current military computing platforms,” said Rod Rice, General Manager, Military/Aerospace Products, GE Intelligent Platforms. “The requirement exists to substantially increase the throughput of this data, and the IBX400 provides a solution. GE’s HPEC strategy sees us embracing the best commercial High Performance Computing technologies and adapting them for the specific needs of defense and aerospace customers, and the IBX400 is an excellent example of that strategy in action.” The IBX400 harnesses the performance and flexibility of Mellanox Technologies’ sixth generation SwitchX 2 VPI switch.
“High performance computing technologies are transforming the military embedded computing landscape by providing sophisticated, powerful analysis of complex and massive amounts of data,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “The IBX400 with Mellanox low-latency, high bandwidth InfiniBand switching technology enables leading performance for the most demanding intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance applications.”
Key features of the IBX400 include: DDR InfiniBand data plane with 20 fat pipes and in-band subnet management; a Gigabit Ethernet control plane with 16 ultra-thin pipes and fully-managed layer 2/3 Ethernet switch fabric; and GE’s OpenWare™ control plane switch management with QoS priority and support for IPv6 and IPv4 switching.
>>For more information on this product, clickhere
