The FastCluster 3000 SERIES integrates the Myri-10G chipset, Myrinet Express (MX) and MPI/MX open software stack into its hybrid solution offering 10+10 Gbits/s data rate in backplane interconnect performance as well as broad interoperability with other 10-Gigabit Ethernet systems.

Taking advantage of the FPGA's lower power consumption and propensity to excel at fine grained parallelism, bitwise operations and high data sampling rates the FPGA component is well suited to handle highly specialized, I/O intensive, repetitive tasks in user applications, such as the gathering and processing of sensor data.

To ease the development of FPGA applications DSP productivity tools, including the CoreFire™ Design Suite, are provided. CoreFire is a graphical user interface (GUI) FPGA development tool with over 1,000 core modules to assist engineers in turning a high level data flow concept into algorithms programmed for the FPGA board. The development package includes support for both fixed point and floating point DSP. CoreFire automatically generates inter-module control fabric.

The PowerPC, offering a good balance between vector and scalar operations, draws upon a software development environment that includes a choice of standards based operating systems (VxWorks or Linux), a rich set of libraries (ISSPL, VSIPL) with digital signal processing algorithms, and the Wind River® Workbench development tool suite that promotes collaboration, productivity and portability so users may quickly develop, test and run complex applications.

This creates a unique hybrid computing environment that enables efficient and rapid design of computational intensive solutions used in radar, sonar, target recognition and other military and aerospace DSP applications. .

Top of Page

CSP Inc. Awarded Raytheon Contract
to Supply FastCluster 220R Systems

BILLERICA, Massachusetts, August 8, 2006 - CSP Inc., a provider of IT solutions, systems integration services and dense cluster computing systems, today reported a contract award, worth between $17 and $18 million, to provide Raytheon Company with FastCluster 220R systems. Initial system deliveries will begin in late 2006 and continue over the next year.

CSPI Selects Annapolis Micro Systems CoreFire FPGA Technologies for its FastCluster 3000 SERIES
Partnership brings High Performance Reconfigurable Computing capability to Embedded Cluster Computing

BILLERICA, Massachusetts ,January 11, 2007 - CSP Inc. (NASDAQ: CSPI) MultiComputer Division, a leading supplier of rugged embedded clusters, announced today its selection of CoreFire™ FPGA technologies, from Annapolis Micro Systems, to power its next generation of High Performance Reconfigurable Computing (HPRC) embedded clusters. Under this partnership CSPI will integrate Annapolis's state of the art FPGA designs and CoreFire Development Suite into its rugged embedded clusters to boost DSP front end capabilities.

Combining CSPI's experience in high performance embedded computing with Annapolis's CoreFire FPGA technologies offers an advanced Open Architecture for DoD programs requiring HPRC scalable platforms in harsh environments. "Through our strategic partnership with Annapolis we are able to offer our FastCluster customers a mature development environment for DSP FPGA designs, delivering a tenfold improvement in performance and productivity": stated Alexander R. Lupinetti, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of CSP, Inc.

The selection of the CoreFire Data Flow technologies for FPGA designs enables CSPI and Annapolis to deploy the first true HPRC embedded open platforms based upon PCI Express, Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA's, Freescale's multicore 8641D PowerPC processor and MPI (Message Passing Interface). This advanced hybrid node architecture will find its way into FastCluster XL-Gate blades that will start reaching the market by mid 2007.

"CSPI's deployment of embedded clustering technology for DoD programs has been very successful," says Jane Donaldson, Annapolis founder and CEO. "With the selection of CoreFire technologies for its hybrid node cluster we look forward to helping CSPI deliver new levels of performance in extremely demanding computational and physical environments".

The CoreFire Design Suite and DSP Core Library leverage Annapolis's experience as a leading provider of high-performance FPGA solutions. These FPGA technologies deliver productivity and code re-use at the user application layer with a data flow model optimized for DSP processing and full support for custom VHDL cores as well as customer developed IP.

"Our FastCluster systems will benefit not only from the increased performance delivered by the latest Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA's but from Annapolis' robust set of features including: proven BSP support for FPGA's, multi-FPGA support via RocketIO, a large DSP Core Library and most importantly the productivity advantages associated with the CoreFire Development Suite for FPGA's" said Bernard Pelon, Director of Product Research.

CSPI's strategic partnership with Annapolis includes a reseller agreement covering the entire Annapolis product line to meet our customer requirements. A ready to use CoreFire PCI-X Development Platform is available now to enable early development. This will be followed by modular FPGA solutions using standard XMC modules on FastCluster I/O carrier boards.

A small FastCluster 8-Slot chassis is a compact VXS system ideal for use in a lab during the development phase of an application and for deployment in a benign (non-rugged) environment. It is designed to support up to seven (7) VXS Payloads and one VXS Switch Module Specifically, the system can accommodate a maximum of four (4) XL-Gate hybrid payloads and as many as seven (7) StarGate payloads in two types of slots: Dual Usage Slots for either a StarGate or XL-Gate payload and Single Usage Slots for StarGate only.