GOVERNMENT

The Mercury PowerBlock 50 packs 5x performance improvement over available systems, in a six-inch footprint that weighs in at 7 pounds: Moves from lab desktop to deployment on next-generation small ground, naval, and air vehicles: Mercury Computer Systems unveiled its smallest embedded system yesterday at an exclusive event in conjunction with the Critical Embedded Systems (CES) MediaFest 2008, which commences today at the Hilton Scottsdale Resort and Villas in Scottsdale, AZ. The PowerBlock 50 system from Mercury Computer Systems is a high-performance, ultra-compact embedded computer designed for maximum performance in a minimal footprint, for small platforms in the 6- to 10-pound range. Optimized for real-time image, sensor, and signal processing and ruggedized for harsh environments, it is fully integrated and programmable, with state-of-the-art liquid cooling. The PowerBlock 50 extends Mercury’s robust offering of computing solutions available in very small to large form factors to suit a broad range of customer applications. The system’s modular architecture allows for flexible configurations of multiple processors, delivering well over 100 GFLOPS of processing power in a small, lightweight package. A fully configured PowerBlock 50 weighs less than 10 pounds, measuring approximately 4” x 5” x 6” ─ and can be held comfortably in one hand. “The PowerBlock 50 was specifically designed to help our customer base pursue 6- to 10-pound payloads, and revolutionizes the ability to perform extreme computing in space- and weight-constrained applications,” said Brian Hoerl, Vice President of Sales for Advanced Computing Solutions at Mercury Computer Systems. “With groundbreaking processing density and a flexible development environment, the PowerBlock 50 extends Mercury’s strategy of enabling new levels of computing power for systems embedded in small platforms.” The system is available now as the PowerBlock 50 EDK (Engineering Development Kit), which is a complete software development platform. The EDK includes a PowerBlock 50 system, Linux BSP development environment, and a desktop heat rejection unit (HRU) to support the PowerBlock 50’s cooling requirements. As the first in a series of small form factor platforms, the PowerBlock 50 EDK is designed for desktop use in a laboratory or software development environment, for development and optimization of runtime software deployable on PowerBlock 50 systems. The PowerBlock 50 EDK is customizable into configurations that include PowerQUICC, Virtex-4, and Intel processors, and SATA storage. Each configuration includes Gigabit Ethernet and RS-232 I/O interfaces. The PowerBlock 50 EDK is available today. For more information, visit Mercury at CES May 5-6 at the Hilton Scottsdale Resort and Villas in Scottsdale, AZ; visit its Web site; contact Mercury at (866) 627-6951, or e-mail your request to info@mc.com.