Speeding Autonomous Defense Designs

The S2000 features the Intel Xeon scalable 8160T 24-core processor providing a powerful development tool that helps accelerate innovation. Additional processor options are available. The platform has an expansion slot for full-sized GPU, FPGA accelerators and video PCIe cards and a modular, ruggedized carrier board that is suitable for deployment. It also offers 128 gigabytes of M.2 storage and can be purchased in a liquid or air-cooled chassis.

Kontron developed its latest COBALT S1901 platform to meet the high-performance embedded computing requirements in forthcoming autonomous, artificial intelligence and deep leaning defence applications. Scheduled to be available in early 2019, the COBALT S1901 provides a powerful, compact yet flexible platform that delivers the robust features necessary to sift through voluminous streams of data, real-time data crunching and streamlined situational analysis enabling faster decision-making and access to critical insight information.

Meeting next-generation autonomous defence design requirements, the COBALT S1901 HPEC platform features multiple GPU, FPGA accelerator cards or video module options. It offers extensive high-speed I/O options such as 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) copper or fibre, USB 3.0, ruggedized connectors for RF and camera interfaces. Storage capacities are met with its M.2 NVME slots or high capacity 2.5-inch SSD slots (fixed or removable). The latest COBALT platform also offers WiFi and/or LTE cellular modem connectivity options. In addition, it provides superior digital signal processing (DSP) performance, is ruggedized for harsh environments and meets the military's strict size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) guidelines.

The COBALT S1901 employs Kontron's proven, open-architecture COMe-bDV7R Computer-on-Module that delivers server-grade performance via its Intel Atom(r) processor C3000 series processor performance and its multi-processing cores permit multiple configuration options allowing one design to scale across many use cases. It is available with up to 64 gigabytes of RAM, with additionally available COMe module, processor and memory options. Customers can also select from air cooled assist and conduction cooled platform options.

Future autonomous, AI and deep learning defence applications will need fully-validated development tools and highly rugged, standards-based, multi-core platforms that can reliably handle compute-intensive deployments. Leveraging its extensive military system experience, Kontron's HPEC systems have repeatedly demonstrated their worth supplying parallel virtual machine execution and advanced rugged architectures that balance processor power with I/O bandwidth to meet current and upcoming operational warfare system requirements. Utilizing the S2000 Evaluation Platform and the soon to be available COBALT S1901 makes it possible to host computationally-challenging autonomous, AI and deep learning applications on a small form factor platform that matches the requirements of a broader range of defence programs.