Your competitors are deploying PC-based ISR systems. Should you? How using PC-based signal processing in your next ISR system could save you time and money. © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected] [email protected]

Agenda • • • • • • • •

Current Challenges Historical Approaches The Case Against the PC Current PC Landscape The Case for the PC PC-Based Architecture and Workflow Case Study Q&A

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

2

Global Security situation

“We have slain a large dragon, but we now live in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.” - Clinton-era CIA Director James Woolsey, 1993

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

3

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

4

ISR response US DoD STRATEGIC GOALS •

2 DETER CONFLICT AND PROMOTE SECURITY •

2.1X2: Improve ISR to enhance Battle Space awareness

US DoD ISR funding is supporting key enhancements for deployed forces including: Ground based and Airborne Collection • Full motion video and signals intelligence • Enhanced ISR communications • Processing, exploitation and dissemination •

Ref: http://comptroller.defense.gov/docs/citizensreport.pdf © 2010

US DoD Summary Performance and Financial Info FY 2009

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

5

Technical Demands • Increasing Signal Density Allocated Frequency Spectrum 0 – 300 GHz

• Increasing Signal Complexity

• Increasing variety of threats •

Commercial wireless keeps changing © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

6

Operational demands •

Quick Response Capability •

•

Deployments to new hot spots, new requirements

Demand for Real-time actionable intelligence • •

© 2010

Commanders need to respond quickly to intelligence Address the Analysis Gap

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

7

Program pressures • Shrinking Budgets

• Shorter Schedules

• Reduce Cost and Risk

© 2010

Budgets

Timelines

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

8

Typical SIGINT System

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

9

Typical Equipment • Tuners • •

COTS – VME, cPCI, rackmount, ATR, other custom

• Digitizer, IF processor • •

COTS boards (VME, cPCI) Custom

• Baseband processor • •

COTS boards (VME, cPCI) Custom

• Beamformer •

Often custom

• Analysis & Control subsystem •

Often PC-based

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

10

Typical Development approach

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

11

Problems with current approach: Change requests • Threat changes • New mission •  Requirements change. • Examples of requirement changes 

 



User interface change New wireless air interface Algorithm change

Go back to start © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

12

Go back to start

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

13

Why NOT use PC? Your algorithm developer says:

“My Matlab model runs faster on my desktop PC than the real software on the real target system.” How about using it in the field? What do you tell him?

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

14

Why NOT use PCs? Typical complaints against using PCs in SIGINT • “PCs aren‟t real time.” •

PC Operating systems usually aren‟t real time

• “x86 processors are slow at signal processing calculations” •

Vector processors like PowerPC with Altivec have had a major advantage.

• “PCs are physically cumbersome and non-rugged” •

Options available to deal with this

• “PCs keep changing” •

Obsolescence is an issue

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

15

Developments in PCs Internal Communications • Point-to-point links are replacing buses • •



Buses share a fixed limited bandwidth Point-to-point links scale in capacity with # of nodes

Ethernet demonstrated the benefit of moving from Bus architecture to switched fabric



PCI express links are replacing the PCI bus



Links are replacing Front-side bus



Memory buses looking like links •

multiple channels from CPU to memory

• Internal communications capacity can now handle high-bandwidth signals used in SIGINT.

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

16

Developments in PCs Number Crunching • New CPUs have multiple cores, with vector processing engines. 

Previously a key advantage in PowerPCs with Altivec SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) since Pentium III AVX (Advanced Vector eXtensions) debut on Sandybridge



New processor cores have improved vector processing engines

 

•

i7-975 gets 55 GFLOPS

• GPUs can be used for signal processing  

Nvidia claims 515 DP GFLOPS in its Tesla 2050 “Fermi” GPUs Programmability improving with C for CUDA, OpenCL, MS Direct Compute, Jacket

References: http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/cs-023143.htm - Intel‟s processor metrics for export compliance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y0dh78ez.aspx - Microsoft support for SSE http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_tesla_C2050_C2070_us.html Tesla C2050 product data

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

17

Developments in PCs Memory & Storage

• Large Memory  24 GB, 32 GB, 128 GB RAM at 1233 MHz widely available in servers • Storage:

RAID common in PCs now  Sustained write rates of 750 MB/s widely available  Solid-state storage available with 950 MB/s sustained write  You can build high-bandwidth disk storage more easily, without resorting to custom devices 

References: http://sine.ni.com/ds/app/doc/p/id/ds-266/lang/en - NI - pcie cabled RAID http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/pci-express/z-drive-r2.html OCZ pcie internal Solid State Drive product page

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

18

Moore’s Law

•Number of transistors on a chip doubles every 24 months. •Probably has 10 to 15 years to go. •Microprocessor performance kept up since the „60s. Reference: http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/ © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

19

Wireless Data Rate growth

Observation: PHY complexity growth is slower than Moore’s Law. Ref: Vodafone Chair, Tech University of Dresden, 2010, http://www.vodafone-chair.com/ © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

20

What does this mean? 1. Air Interfaces are getting more complex.  Designing demodulators is getting harder. 2. General-purpose computing power is growing than the PHY computational requirement. 

faster

You can demodulate more of the latest air interfaces on a PC

3. It‟s generally Easier to develop for a PC than for special-purpose processors. Hence…

• The advantages of using a PC are growing faster than the disadvantages. © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

21

Keeping up with Osama • Commercial air interface standards change rapidly •

The threat changes rapidly with them

• It‟s hard to keep your SIGINT system up to date • The bad guys know that. •

They just keep using the latest phones.

Faster time to field updates means better intercept success rate. © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

22

Addressing the Complaints: “PCs aren’t real time systems” Actually the OPERATING SYSTEMS typically aren‟t real time. Do you really need Real Time? 

RT does NOT always mean FASTER RT is where you can GUARANTEE a response within a certain time of an input event.



RT is often needed in:



Feedback control systems Event – response systems Follow-up jamming of frequency-hopping signals Assigning a DF processor to a detected signal.

• • • •

•

For these cases, RT versions of Linux are getting more mainstream.

•

Other cases may still need a Real-time Operating System (RTOS)    

VxWorks INTEGRITY QNX LynxOS

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

23

Addressing the Complaints: “PCs aren’t real time systems” Many SIGINT cases don‟t need real time. Have to be FAST, so you don‟t miss a transient Design software so guaranteed response time isn‟t needed. Timestamp events

• • • 

Queue it all up and process it. Reaction can be later.

•

Design internal processes to avoid deadlines.

•

Example from the IT world:   

Transaction processing systems process thousands of transactions per second ((e.g. online purchases) Usually NOT real-time systems, e.g. Windows / SQL You get your “approval” within seconds – fast enough

http://www.tpc.org/tpce/results/tpce_perf_results.asp -- top 10 Transaction Processing servers © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

24

Addressing the Complaints: “PCs keep changing”

• Obsolescence is an issue. 

Need to select products with longevity.



Intel‟s chooses processors from the Server, Desktop & Mobile sectors, and puts them on a 7-year life cycle



Some motherboard vendors have similar programs.



SIGINT-oriented I/O cards often have a longer lifetime

http://www.corvalent.com/02b_ind_boards.shtml © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

25

Addressing the Complaints: “PCs are big & cumbersome”

• PCs are big & cumbersome. 

Desktop or server PC is big compared to a VME blade.



The large space in a Motherboard-based PC allows large heatsinks for the CPU(s).



SBCs generally have Laptop-grade CPUs •



E.g. dual-core i7

Powerful PCs are available in smaller sizes, like 1U and 2U rackmount servers

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

26

Addressing the Complaints: “PCs aren’t rugged.” • The PC‟s card format doesn‟t allow airflow like a VME, cPCI, VPX card •

Airflow improvement techniques

• Socketed processors & memory • Industrial PCs are more rugged than commercial counterparts, often used in Navy ships. • Cocooning in shock-mount racks for land mobile & transportable uses. http://www.chassis-plans.com/ © 2010

Industrial PC photo.

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

27

Migration to rugged You can opt for VPX equivalents that facilitate porting software from PC to fielded system: • •

•

SBC with an i7 CPU (dual-core currently) Card cage for analog & IF processing cards PCIe for interconnect

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

28

The Case for PCs • PC processing power has caught up with specialpurpose hardware • Ease of programming & testing • I/O for SIGINT applications is available for PCs • Large ecosystem Lots of add-in hardware & software available • Broad range of software tools and expertise available •

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

29

PC-based SIGINT System

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

30

PC-based SIGINT System PCIe

Usually external

XMC cards

Usually external © 2010

PCIe

Multicore X86

RAID controller

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

31

Typical Development approach

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

32

PC-based Development approach

Integrate Model with IF subsystem

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

33

The Case for PCs (more) • Schedule • •

Reduced time to deployment Rapid reaction to changing threats

• Cost • • •

Target hardware Development hardware Development software

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

34

Case Study Requirements

• Customer: Government agency • Required a signal processing system for a Transceiver • Previous systems were partitioned: • •

VME-based and PC-based I/O & processing Wanted to unify all signal processing in a PC

• Requirements: • • •

Rackmount Signal Processing Unit Two Xeon quad-core processors Analog IF 4 Ch In / 4Ch Out •

• • • •

Connect to external RF front end

FPGA processing Full-bandwidth data from ADC to PC (at 200 MSPS) Room for expansion boards (e.g. GPU Acceleration) Red Hat Linux © 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

35

Case Study – SDR-2010 What was delivered

• I/O & processing blade:

XMC-1131 Dual 250 MSPS ADC

• XMC-1131: Dual ADC 250 MSPS, 14 bits, Virtex 5 FX130T FPGA • XMC-2131: Dual ADC 300 MSPS, 14 bits, Virtex 5 FX130T FPGA

XMC-2131 Dual 300 MSPS DAC

• PRO-2910: XMC carrier board with PCIe interface • Card-mounted fans XMC-1131

© 2010

XMC-2131

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

36

Case Study – SDR-2010 PC/Server-Based Signal Processing Platform • “Pre-Integrated Sub-system”        

Dual Xeon server Install and test ADC/DAC FPGA modules Verify Mechanical, cabling & test cooling Integrate Linux Operating System quicCommTM API, VHDL reference designs, documentation Software examples for full-bandwidth dataflow Modular, cost-effective, scalable Suitable for ground-based environment

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

37

What was delivered SDR-2010 Transceiver

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

38

What was delivered Summary • Cost effective solution • Upgradeable platform  

modularity for tech refresh, COTS use, sparing costs, maintainability, reliability

• Variety of processing elements   

FPGA CPU GPU

• Avoid data flow bottlenecks 

Provide adequate resources with suitable data paths

• Simplicity: avoid too many layers in software and hardware

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

39

Conclusion • Consider PC-based platforms for your next quick reaction projects Maintain performance advantage • Vast eco-system of components • Rugged enough for most deployments • Develop, Demo and Deploy on same hardware • Pre-Integrated sub-systems reduce your development risk and accelerate schedule •

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

40

Questions? Thank You for Joining Us! For more information, contact us at 1.866.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 or email: •

Tudor Davies

[email protected]

•

Cyrus Sy

[email protected]

•

Spectrum Sales

[email protected]

To access a recording or presentation material for this event, visit: www.spectrumsignal.com/webcasts

© 2010

Web www.spectrumsignal.com Tel +1.800.663.8986 / 604.676.6700 Email [email protected]

41