GE Intros Embedded HPEC Board Powered by Intel Sandy Bridge Quad-Core CPUs

GE Intelligent Platforms just announced that Intel's second-generation Core processors have found their way in one of the company's most advanced multiprocessor platforms, the DSP280 rugged dual socket 6U VPX board that is designed to be used in high performance embedded computing solutions.

These are usually deployed by the military inside manned and unmanned airborne, ground and naval vehicles to perform tasks such as ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), radar, sonar, and image and sensor processing.

At the heart of the board, we find two Intel Core i7 embedded CPUs that pack four processing cores, each clocked at 2GHz (up to 3GHz with Turbo Boost), an Intel HD 3000 GPU and 6MB of Level 3 cache paired together with two Intel QM67 Express chipsets.

In addition to the Intel CPUs, GE's board also features 16GB of DDR3 RAM memory (8GB for each of the Core i7 chips), as well as 8GB of NAND flash for storage that can be upgraded to 16GB.

More than one processing nodes can be used together and they communicate through10 Gigabit Ethernet and DDR InfiniBand dual port NICs which delivers data rates of up to 1.8 GB/s per channel.

Performance wise, a dual-CPU board is capable of reaching 260 gigaflops peak performance.

"The DSP280 responds to the asymmetric, dynamic and rapidly changing threat landscape by providing higher computing performance in a smaller space, at lower weight and with less power consumption than has previously been possible," said Michael Stern, global product manager for Military & Aerospace High Performance Embedded Computing at GE Intelligent Platforms.

"What this allows is extended mission - or 'loiter' - time across a broader range of platforms while providing more sensor data at higher resolutions in a shorter time, delivering better information to decision makers and providing superior activity-based intelligence."