Mercury Computer Systems Continues to Drive Open Architecture Strategy for High Performance, Real-Time Embedded Processing and ISR Markets

“I am thrilled to welcome Mercury as our newest member and to congratulate them on the launch of their OpenMPI/OFED product,” said Jim Ryan, chairman of the OpenFabrics Alliance. “Mercury’s work is compelling because it applies OFED software to a new category of real-time high performance embedded applications and systems, including support for the serial RapidIO® switched fabric.”



In support of Mercury’s Open Architecture Initiative for the high performance embedded computer market, two new capabilities are being introduced: OpenMPI communications software providing the open standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) API to applications, and an OFED implementation, a lower level communications layer on which Open MPI resides. Together, these capabilities provide ISR application portability with extremely efficient communications with the embedded computer’s data plane fabrics such as serial RapidIO, 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand.



OFED, an open source software distribution containing a standard fabric access API, is widely adopted in the High Performance Computing (HPC) community. Mercury brings OFED to the real-time high performance embedded computing space with a fabric-independent and optimized implementation that includes high bandwidth, low latency data transfer support. Mercury has enabled OFED-based middleware packages, such as Open MPI, to run on embedded systems without sacrificing performance. This expands the impact and reach of OFED and its robust software ecosystem from the HPC/server market segments to now include the real-time, high performance embedded computer market.



Open MPI/OFED middleware provides an abstraction layer between the hardware and the customer application, thus preserving the software investment over time. This not only enables user software to be leveraged from platform generation to platform generation, but also allows rapid code migration from HPC-based systems, such as high-end workstations and blade servers, to traditional embedded computer systems.



“With OpenMPI/OFED, we see a 10x improvement compared to the previous generation Ethernet Open MPI performance, and with the newer serial RapidIO-based embedded systems we achieved a 1.5x improvement beyond the performance of a straightforward port of the Open MPI and OFED software to the platform,” said Steve Patterson, vice president of Defense Product Management at Mercury Computer Systems. “In one large customer program of record, OpenMPI/OFED was benchmarked on a system with more than 48 PowerPC®/AltiVec™ nodes. OpenMPI/OFED was selected by the customer based on its high performance, ease-of-use and application code investment protection,” Patterson added.



Mercury recently completed their second quarter of OpenMPI/OFED shipments for the PowerPC/serial RapidIO Ensemble product lines. OpenMPI/OFED is now available for Mercury’s PowerPC and Intel processors, including support for Mercury’s ES7100, ES6000 (OpenVPX) and ES5000 (VXS) products. Support includes drivers for Mercury’s previously announced Protocol Offload Engine Technology™ (POET™) for fabric-independent, high performance data plane transfers with Intel Processors.



Mercury has a long history of advancing the embedded computing market with industry-leading, distributed multi-computing solutions and contributing significantly to industry efforts defining standard software interfaces for application development. OpenMPI/OFED joins previous standards that Mercury led in adoption in the embedded computer market, including most recently OpenSAL and OpenVPX.



Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. – Where Challenges Drive Innovation®



Mercury Computer Systems (www.mc.com, NASDAQ: MRCY) is a best of breed provider of open, application-ready, multi-INT subsystems for the ISR market. With 25+ years’ experience in embedded computing, superior domain expertise in radar, EW, EO/IR, C4I, and sonar applications, and more than 300 successful program deployments including Aegis, Global Hawk, and Predator, Mercury’s Services and Systems Integration team leads the industry in partnering with customers to design and integrate system-level solutions that minimize program risk, maximize application portability, and accelerate customers’ time to market.



Mercury is based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and serves customers worldwide through a broad network of direct sales offices, subsidiaries, and distributors.