MultiComputer
Solutions
A Quarterly Publication
from the CSP Inc. MultiComputer Division
November
2003
Contents (click title to jump to story)
CSP Inc. Teams with Lockheed Martin on U.S. Navy's Advanced Hawkeye Program
CSP
Inc. Reports Fourth-Quarter Fiscal 2003 Year-End Financial Results
Feature Story
Lockheed Martin Integrates CSPI Radar Interface Card (RIC) in Reconfigurable Generic Search Radar Display Signal Processor (RGSD)
Lockheed Martin presented "An Open Architecture for an Embedded Signal Processing Subsystem" during the 7th Annual
Workshop on High Performance Embedded Computing held at MIT Lincoln Lab in Lexington, Massachusetts on September 23-25, 2003.
The presentation highlighted the RGSD project which includes CSPI as a COTS hardware supplier and investment partner.
The primary objective of the project is to utilize high performance embedded computing to replace legacy signal processing equipment in future radar programs. CSPI has been tasked with providing hardware and software development environments, developing radar interface boards and providing development support to this effort. The company will be working not only with Lockheed Martin, but also with INDRA, VMETRO, and Primagraphics on this project.
CSPI’s COTS solution meets the criteria for flexibility, reusability and scalability required by the project. CSPI products are designed and tested to support open architecture hardware standards such as VME64x and PCI/PMC and to optimize software protocols including Message Passing Interface (MPI) software, TCP/IP, Vector Signal Processing Libraries (VSIPL.), and the real-time operating system, VxWorks with the Tornado II development tool suite.
The RGSD project implements CSPI’s Dual Radar and Display Interface Card as a high performance (64 bit/66 MHz) PCI controller providing a high bandwidth, low latency connection.
Radar / Display Interface Card Characteristics:
Interface to Radar (RS-422):
Display Interface:
CSPI In the News
CSP Inc. Teams with Lockheed Martin on U.S. Navy's Advanced Hawkeye Program
Company Receives Contract to Produce Ruggedized Version of Its Advanced MultiComputer TechnologyE-2C Hawkeye Navy photo by Airman Angel G. Hilbrands
BILLERICA, Massachusetts, September 23, 2003 - CSP Inc. (NASDAQ: CSPI) announced today that its MultiComputer Division, a leading supplier of high-performance cluster computing systems, has been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] to provide its advanced 2000 SERIES MultiComputer products and technology for use in the next-generation radar in the U.S. Navy’s advanced E-2C Hawkeye aircraft. The System Development and Demonstration (SD&D) contract value is expected to reach approximately $6 million.
As part of the full SD&D phase of the Advanced Hawkeye (AHE) program, Lockheed Martin will license technology from CSPI, and the companies will collaborate on the design and development of ruggedized versions of the CSPI 2000 SERIES MultiComputers.
"I am proud that our most advanced MultiComputer technology has been selected for the SD&D phase of the Advanced Hawkeye program," said Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alexander R. Lupinetti. "Our participation in the AHE program speaks to the energy, dedication and commitment of each of our employees and the quality of our products. CSPI’s 2000 SERIES MultiComputers deliver high-speed processing and mission-critical performance ideally suited to the U.S. Navy’s exacting specifications. We are excited about teaming with Lockheed Martin on this major program."
Lockheed Martin is leading an AHE team responsible for design and development of the Hawkeye’s next-generation radar, which is slated to replace the current AN/APS-145 airborne radar system by 2010. In the SD&D phase, Lockheed Martin is scheduled to produce five radar systems the Navy will use for qualification, reliability and flight-testing. This is scheduled to be followed by a full-scale production program to outfit all 75 aircraft in the E-2C fleet by 2020 according to the Lockheed Martin press release, dated August 5, 2003.
About
Lockheed Martin
Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin employs about 125,000
people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and
services.
Feature Product
StarGate is one of the initial products in CSPI's new generation of MultiComputers that benefit from the exceptional performance provided by the 1 GHz Motorola 7457 PowerPC microprocessors with AltiVec™ technology and a 1 GB memory subsystem. The StarGate Model 2923 I/O Blade is equipped with two independent processing nodes, each with access to two 64-bit/66 MHz PCI buses. The unique design of the StarGate, supporting two fast PCI buses per processor, enables concurrent I/O streaming and data processing. One PCI bus is reserved to handle Myrinet™ data transfers, at the full duplex speed of 250 MB/s in each direction, from the LANai network processor to the VME P0 connector on the backplane. The other PCI bus supports a single PMC slot for high speed data streaming operations.
Powerful MultiComputers are easily integrated with the StarGate using Backplane Overlay Switch Modules, Chassis Switch Modules, and Serial Line Cards to scale the Myrinet cluster interconnect system to meet application requirements. MultiComputer applications demanding extreme compute power density and high performance I/O streams can be configured with a combination of StarGate and quad MultiComputer boards (four processing nodes in a 6U form factor). When compute density can be reduced to two processors per 6U slot, StarGate boards, with or without PMC’s, are the best choice to handle I/O and processing requirements using a single board type.
StarGate is available with either the open source Linux operating system and GNU toolkit or the industry standard VxWorks™ real-time operating system and Tornado II development tools suite. The software environment also incorporates CSPI's highly optimized ISSPL-ALTand VSIPL math libraries and the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library for interprocessor communications.
Performance Information
CSPI's new generation of MultiComputers benefit from the exceptional performance provided by the 1 GHz Motorola 7457 PowerPC microprocessors with AltiVec technology and a 1 GB memory subsystem. Products based on this architecture, such as the StarGate 2923, deliver more than twice the computational power of previous generation products.
This increase in system performance has been evaluated using the the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a benchmarking tool. The value of the FFT in measuring system performance stems from the fact that the execution of an FFT tests the effectiveness of the system design in several areas: memory access, processor efficiency, and data flow.
The FFT is one of over 250 functions included in the Industry Standard Signal Processing Library (ISSPL-ALT) for CSPI MultiComputers. The ISSPL-ALT provides a full complement of routines to take advantage of the floating-point arithmetic capabilities of the AltiVec. All routines are callable from C and C++ complied programs to achieve rapid and efficient program development.
Figure 1 - Shows a performance comparison for the execution of a complex FFT on CSPI MultiComputers ranging from the early 2000 SERIES products (264x) which employed a PowerPC 604 with a 16 KB/16 KB L1 Cache and a 256 KB L2 Cache to the new generation of products (2923) which implement a MPC7457 operating at 1 GHz with a 32 KB/32 KB on-board L1 cache, an on-chip L2 cache of 512 KB and an off-chip L3 cache of 2 MB. The FFT is one of over 250 functions included in the Industry Standard Signal Processing Library (ISSPL-ALT)) for CSPI MultiComputers. The ISSPL-ALT provides a full complement of routines to take advantage of the floating-point arithmetic capabilities of the AltiVec. All routines are callable from C and C++ complied programs to achieve rapid and efficient program development.
The efficiency of the StarGate 2923 system design and performance provided by the 1 GHz Motorola 7457 PowerPC microprocessors with AltiVec were put to the test by measuring execution times of key functions within the ISSPL-Alt. Specifically presented here are the results of the FFT subroutines: the complex FFT, forward; the basic vector arithmetic subroutines: vector add (vadd), vector square root (vsqrt), and vector multiply (vmul); and vector reduction subroutines: real dot product (dotpr) and complex conjugate dot product (ccdotp_s).
The substantial increase in performance is due to
the advanced high-performance superscalar microprocessor architecture of the MPC7457, featuring:
(FIQ, GIQ, VIQ)
Figure 2 - This ISSPL Performance chart shows the relative performance of the MPC7457 @ 1 GHz (StarGate) compared to the MPC7410 @ 500 MHz (JumpGate). The StarGate consistently outperforms the JumpGate by more than a factor of 2.
CSP Inc. Reports
Fourth-Quarter and Fiscal 2003 Year-End Financial Results
For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, CSP Inc. reported sales of $11.0 million compared with $7.6 million for the year-earlier quarter. The Company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $445,000, or $(0.13) per share, compared with a net loss of $3.7 million, or $(1.06) per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002. During the fourth-quarter 2003 the Company recorded an impairment charge for goodwill of $480,000. The fourth-quarter 2002 net loss includes a non- cash charge of $3.3 million relating to the establishment of a valuation allowance against its deferred tax asset.
For the fiscal year ended September 30, 2003, the Company reported sales of $32.5 million, compared with sales of $28.1 million for fiscal 2002. For fiscal 2003, the Company reported a net loss of $1.4 million, or $(0.39) per share. This compares with net loss of $5.7 million, or $(1.61) per share, for the prior year.
Chairman, President and CEO
Alexander R. Lupinetti stated, "We achieved several key accomplishments in the fourth quarter, including
winning a major multicomputer defense contract and taking actions to position MODCOMP for growth when IT
spending begins to rebound."
"As we previously announced, during the
quarter we won a multimillion-dollar contract from Lockheed Martin Systems Integration to produce our advanced
2000 SERIES MultiComputers for the design and development phase of the next-generation radar in the U.S. Navy's
E-2C Hawkeye aircraft," stated Lupinetti. This next-generation radar is slated to replace the Hawkeye's
current airborne radar system. During the design and development phase, Lockheed Martin is scheduled to produce
five radar systems that the Navy will use for qualification, reliability and flight-testing. The Navy then plans
a full-scale production program to outfit all 75 aircraft in the E-2C fleet by 2020.
"Lockheed Martin chose our 2000 SERIES MultiComputers
because they deliver the high-speed processing and mission-critical performance that make them ideally suited to the
U.S. Navy's exacting specifications," continued Lupinetti. "We are greatly encouraged that our multicomputers
were chosen for this important program, and we continue to move forward in the acquisition process on additional
defense-related opportunities for our Linux-based multicomputers."
"At our MODCOMP Division, the integration of
Technisource hardware has been completed," added Lupinetti. "Technisource, a reseller of software and hardware
products for IT infrastructure requirements and a provider of system integration services, now operates as the Systems
and Solutions Division of MODCOMP. During the quarter, that division signed three new reseller agreements. We will offer
security appliances from CyberGuard and SteelCloud, both technology leaders in network security, and provide turn-key
CRM integration and customization services for TeamScope Software, a CRM software provider."
"We expect that our domestic expertise in high-value
IT systems integration provided by our newly created Systems and Solutions Division will enable us to capitalize
on opportunities created by the trend toward open IT systems. To this end, we expect to incrementally add sales force
professionals as the year progresses. We are cautiously optimistic as we enter fiscal 2004 with improved prospects for
sales growth and a lower cost structure across the organization," concluded Lupinetti.