Vincent Chuffart, Mil & Aero Product Manager, Kontron

• Fabric speed and I/O bandwidth: Performance for next-generation military systems

  Vincent Chuffart Kontron

  In the not-too-distant past, advanced compute-intensive military systems required custom hardware and software solutions. Because of the tremendous increase in embedded computing performance from continuing advancements in processor architectures, open standards platforms are taking the lead. The evolution of process geometries has also brought innovations that continually improve the performance-per-watt equation that greatly helps designers achieve SWaP requirements. Performance per watt has improved almost 400 percent since 2003, comparing the Pentium M at 1.6 GHz to today’s Intel Core i7 at greater than 3 GHz. But designers have been challenged to match the I/O bandwidth level required to unleash the massive increase in parallel embedded computing that is now available.