Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions has introduced the VPX3-4936, its first 3U OpenVPX GPGPU processor module to feature the combination of NVIDIA’s Ampere GPU and a configurable Gen4 PCIe Switch.
The NVIDIA Ampere architecture offers a boost in performance and efficiency over the previous NVIDIA Turing generation, including more flexible concurrent execution of floating point and integer streams. The Ampere device’s third generation Tensor cores deliver up to 4x acceleration of AI/ML algorithms and its next generation RT cores and CUDA core architecture provide 2x performance compared to the previous generation.
While delivering close to 18 TFLOPS FP32 peak performance and 68 dense/136 sparse Tensor TOPS, the NVIDIA Ampere also significantly improves power efficiency, yielding an extremely efficient 154 GFLOPS per Watt. The module’s PCIe Gen4 architecture also doubles the host interface bandwidth, eliminating data throughput bottlenecks.
Pin-compatible with Curtiss-Wright’s Turing architecture VPX3-4935, the VPX3-4936 enables system designers to boost math-intensive processing algorithms without increasing Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP). The board’s PCIe architecture also supports Non-Transparent Bridging (NTB) and daisy chain options for system flexibility.
The rugged VPX-4936 module is designed in compliance with the US Army’s C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) and is aligned with the SOSA Technical Standard to support compute-intensive ISR and EW systems. This module is ideal for use in applications that require significant computational performance, such as the accelerated processing of tensor/matrix computations needed for deep learning neural network inferencing used in deployed AI/ML systems. Example applications include ISR, EW, High-performance RADAR, SIGINT, EO/IR, sensor fusion, and autonomous platforms.
“The VPX3-4936 enables system developers to leverage more complex AI and signal processing algorithms and applications to support compute intensive ISR applications on deployed MOSA systems,” said Chris Wiltsey, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. “We continue to expand our SOSA aligned product portfolio to deliver the most comprehensive range of open standards based system elements for EW and ISR applications, with the highest performance GPU, DSP, and FPGA modular solutions.”
The VPX3-4936 module is fully interoperable with Curtiss-Wright’s broad family of SOSA aligned and non-SOSA aligned 3U OpenVPX solutions. For example, SWaP-constrained systems can pair a single VPX3-4936 with the Intel Xeon D processor-based CHAMP-XD3 DSP engine, which together can augment the powerful sensor processing capabilities of Curtiss-Wright’s Xilinx FPGA-based transceiver modules.
