Industry Insights

RAPIDIO MAKES ITS CASE IN THE MERCHANT MILITARY SUPPLIERS MARKET

By Chris Kissel, Research Analyst Emerging Technologies, In-Stat

In the United States (and probably in other countries) there are two distinct business models for the defense industry. The first business model is the formal military/industrial complex. These enterprises include dedicated contractors, like General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. Also as a part of this definition would be weapons and systems development done by the service branches themselves; the Army Corps of Engineers would be an example of this idea. The second business model would be systems developed by private contractors. Companies that would be included in this category would be Mercury Computer Systems, DRS Technologies, L3 TRL Electronics, WB Electronics, and Motorola Computer Group. The formal term used to describe these companies is merchant military suppliers.

There are differences between the two technology groups. What differentiates the merchant military suppliers from the military/industrial complex is that the merchant military suppliers are more likely to use a combination of proprietary systems, as well as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware. The bigger contractors gravitate toward the larger, closed systems that do not use standards-based protocols or components. A Booz-Allen model of the US military spending model suggests that the US defense industry will spend roughly US $14 billion in COTS hardware and software. Of this total, somewhere between 5-10% of this spending is available to the merchant military suppliers.

There has been a unifying movement within the merchant military supplier market. Motorola and Mercury Computer Systems were instrumental in developing the RapidIO standard. Many of their solutions used the Serial RapidIO interconnect. A key competitor of those companies, Curtiss-Wright, has written a white paper advocating SRIO as the best IO for multiple processor applications. Serial RapidIO is becoming a more common interconnection in the US defense industry.

Derivatives of the Versa Module Eurocard are the most used board/connectors in the defense industry. The VPX format specification (comprising VITA 46 and its complement VPX-REDI/VITA 48), establishes a COTS standard that harnesses the performance of modern, high-speed serial interfaces. The standard defines VME- and CompactPCI-compatible 3U- and 6U-sized modules that use a modern backplane connector capable of handling the signaling rates of today’s high-speed serial fabrics, such as Serial RapidIO. The VPX standard is based on the concept of a “core fabric” connector that is intended as the board-to-board communications medium, also known as the “switched serial backplane.”

PowerPC computing components are the dominating processors for merchant military suppliers. Additionally, many of the applications for the defense industry use a LINUX operating system (OS). The convergence of board/connectors, PowerPC and Linux OS, all optimized for RapidIO, make for a compelling communications or logistics platform.

One of the publicly disclosed weapons systems provided by the merchant military suppliers is Global Hawk. The Global Hawk is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The UAV is used for reconnaissance. Using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), The UAV can provide high-resolution images even through cloud-cover and sandstorms. The Global Hawk can survey as much as 100,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of terrain a day. Germane to this article, Global Hawk is using SRIO for its system I/O.

In-Stat estimates that Serial RapidIO is an interconnection used in roughly 20% of all processors provided in the defense industry. As compelling as Serial RapidIO is as an on-board interconnect and a board-to-board interconnection, in the defense industry, some board designs change over 5-10 year increments. Even so, In-Stat sees Serial RapidIO as an interconnection for 35% of all processors used in the military merchant defense industry by 2009. For more market share information visit: http://www.rapidio.org/switchfabrics_whitepaper