Andrew Yee
May 16th 06, 04:50 AM
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Contact:
Nancy Ambrosiano, (505) 667-0471
April 26, 2006
Space-based supercomputer in design at Los Alamos
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced funding
of a new space payload which dramatically increases on-orbit computational
capabilities. The project is jointly sponsored by the National Nuclear
Security Administration's (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and
Development (NA-22), and the U.S. Department of Defense.
The experimental payload will demonstrate and validate technologies offering
more than 1,000 Giga Operations-per-second (GOps) processing capability for
Software-Defined Radio (SDR) functions in space. SDR is a technology of
interest to the military to support tactical communications and to
commercial television and radio broadcasting. The payload computer's
signal-processing capability of 1,000 GOps is approximately the same as
supercomputers of the last decade, which occupied 50,000 cubic feet and used
50 kW of power. This new payload, by contrast, is designed to weigh 40
pounds and consume only 80 watts, a performance which is enabled by
state-of-the-art, 90-nanometer Virtex(tm)-4 silicon-chip technology from
Xilinx, Inc.
NNSA Program Manager W. Randy Bell said, "Los Alamos' new payload project
will be a path-breaker for our Space Nuclear Explosion Monitoring (SNEM)
program, enabling us to meet stringent new requirements for less weight and
power, while growing our ability to discriminate nuclear-explosion-related
signals versus natural and man-made background signals."
The portfolio manager for space nuclear explosion monitoring, Mark Hodgson,
came to Los Alamos from a career in USAF space innovation. He discussed the
new technology's potential: "Our sensors on the Global Positioning System
and Defense Satellite Program platforms have been severely constrained by
the data downlinks available."
Hodgson continued, "This new reprogrammable, supercomputing-payload
technology enables our science staff to use in space the algorithms and
methods previously only possible in ground-based mainframe computers, and to
continually modify those methods in-situ, for better performance as science
knowledge improves."
Los Alamos senior project leader Mark Dunham helped pioneer Reconfigurable
Computing (RCC) at Los Alamos, the technology upon which the Software
Defined Radio payload is based. DOE, DOD, and DARPA began sponsorship of RCC
at Los Alamos in 1993, leading to the successful development of the CIBOLA
Flight Experiment, which is set to launch this fall on a U.S. Air Force
Atlas-V rocket.
The new payload draws heavily on the high-performance system-on-chip
capabilities provided by Xilinx Inc.'s latest Virtex-4 family of platform
field-programmable gate array (FPGA), on Atmel Corporation's new AT697
RadHard SPARC processor, and on BAE Systems' new chalcogenide C-RAM.
"By using these and other new technologies, our design advances the state of
space processing by two generations, enabling dramatically more flexible
commercial and military communications satellite capabilities. Two of the
major obstacles for lower-cost satellite systems have been payload
obsolescence and excessive development time," Dunham said.
Xilinx, Inc.'s partnership with Los Alamos in space-based reconfigurable
computing was announced in a joint press release in 2000, and it continues
today with the Virtex-4 90-nm domain-optimized FPGA. Aerospace and Defense
Director Rick Padovani said, "The space and defense business is a major
growth segment for Xilinx and we look forward to continuing the successful
cooperation with LANL for Virtex-4 and beyond. Quick migration of our latest
generation silicon into space is a key goal of our program. We are proud to
be part of a team enabling this leap in defense capability." The Virtex-4
device is now being tested for space use by the team of Los Alamos,
Aerospace Corporation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Xilinx, Inc.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California
for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of
Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore
national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.
Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability
of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, developing technologies to reduce threats
from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to defense,
energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.
Contact:
Nancy Ambrosiano, (505) 667-0471
April 26, 2006
Space-based supercomputer in design at Los Alamos
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced funding
of a new space payload which dramatically increases on-orbit computational
capabilities. The project is jointly sponsored by the National Nuclear
Security Administration's (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and
Development (NA-22), and the U.S. Department of Defense.
The experimental payload will demonstrate and validate technologies offering
more than 1,000 Giga Operations-per-second (GOps) processing capability for
Software-Defined Radio (SDR) functions in space. SDR is a technology of
interest to the military to support tactical communications and to
commercial television and radio broadcasting. The payload computer's
signal-processing capability of 1,000 GOps is approximately the same as
supercomputers of the last decade, which occupied 50,000 cubic feet and used
50 kW of power. This new payload, by contrast, is designed to weigh 40
pounds and consume only 80 watts, a performance which is enabled by
state-of-the-art, 90-nanometer Virtex(tm)-4 silicon-chip technology from
Xilinx, Inc.
NNSA Program Manager W. Randy Bell said, "Los Alamos' new payload project
will be a path-breaker for our Space Nuclear Explosion Monitoring (SNEM)
program, enabling us to meet stringent new requirements for less weight and
power, while growing our ability to discriminate nuclear-explosion-related
signals versus natural and man-made background signals."
The portfolio manager for space nuclear explosion monitoring, Mark Hodgson,
came to Los Alamos from a career in USAF space innovation. He discussed the
new technology's potential: "Our sensors on the Global Positioning System
and Defense Satellite Program platforms have been severely constrained by
the data downlinks available."
Hodgson continued, "This new reprogrammable, supercomputing-payload
technology enables our science staff to use in space the algorithms and
methods previously only possible in ground-based mainframe computers, and to
continually modify those methods in-situ, for better performance as science
knowledge improves."
Los Alamos senior project leader Mark Dunham helped pioneer Reconfigurable
Computing (RCC) at Los Alamos, the technology upon which the Software
Defined Radio payload is based. DOE, DOD, and DARPA began sponsorship of RCC
at Los Alamos in 1993, leading to the successful development of the CIBOLA
Flight Experiment, which is set to launch this fall on a U.S. Air Force
Atlas-V rocket.
The new payload draws heavily on the high-performance system-on-chip
capabilities provided by Xilinx Inc.'s latest Virtex-4 family of platform
field-programmable gate array (FPGA), on Atmel Corporation's new AT697
RadHard SPARC processor, and on BAE Systems' new chalcogenide C-RAM.
"By using these and other new technologies, our design advances the state of
space processing by two generations, enabling dramatically more flexible
commercial and military communications satellite capabilities. Two of the
major obstacles for lower-cost satellite systems have been payload
obsolescence and excessive development time," Dunham said.
Xilinx, Inc.'s partnership with Los Alamos in space-based reconfigurable
computing was announced in a joint press release in 2000, and it continues
today with the Virtex-4 90-nm domain-optimized FPGA. Aerospace and Defense
Director Rick Padovani said, "The space and defense business is a major
growth segment for Xilinx and we look forward to continuing the successful
cooperation with LANL for Virtex-4 and beyond. Quick migration of our latest
generation silicon into space is a key goal of our program. We are proud to
be part of a team enabling this leap in defense capability." The Virtex-4
device is now being tested for space use by the team of Los Alamos,
Aerospace Corporation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Xilinx, Inc.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California
for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of
Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore
national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.
Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability
of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, developing technologies to reduce threats
from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to defense,
energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.