GE (NYSE: GE) today announced at GTC (NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference -
San Jose, California: May 14 – 17) the high performance GRA112 3U VPX
rugged graphics board. Designed for demanding graphical applications as
well as GPGPU
(general purpose computing on a graphics processing unit) applications
such as ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), radar and
sonar, it features a 384-core NVIDIA Kepler architecture-based EXK107
GPU. Also provided is 2GBytes of GDDR5 memory which, together with the
latest NVIDIA GPU, makes the GRA112 significantly more powerful than its
predecessor, the GRA111 – for which it provides a simple, cost-effective
technology insertion upgrade.
Kepler is the latest generation of GPU technology from NVIDIA. Previous
GE products, including the powerful multiprocessor NPN240
and IPN250,
were based on earlier NVIDIA architectures, and upgrades to these
platforms will be announced later in the year.
Availability of the pin-compatible GRA112 also provides a technology
insertion upgrade path for users of the MAGIC1
Rugged Display Computer, which currently features the GRA111
processor.
GPGPU has been described as a ‘disruptive’ technology that has enabled
the deployment of sophisticated military/aerospace applications that are
significantly higher in performance but that can be developed in a
shorter time than is possible with alternative development approaches.
It is already widely deployed in a broad range of military/aerospace
applications.
The GRA112 is truly rugged
– as opposed to solutions that feature ‘after the fact’ ruggedization,
or that attempt to deploy commercial subsystems in harsh situations –
meaning that it can be deployed with absolute confidence in the most
challenging military/aerospace environments that are subject to extremes
of shock, vibration, temperature and contaminants. Its small size,
weight and power (SWaP) requirement mean that the GRA112 is also an
ideal solution for applications that are SWaP-constrained such as
unmanned vehicles.
The NVIDIA EXK107 GPU features the company’s CUDA parallel computing
architecture and delivers significant advances in performance per watt
and ease of use over previous generations. The 384-core GPU is capable
of 622 GFLOPS, 64 GBytes/second internal memory bandwidth, and 16
GBytes/second external PCI Express bandwidth.
The GRA112 features the latest PCI Express Gen 3 interconnect.