New multicore processing modules for mission-critical aviation applications

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Mercury Systems has unveiled a new module designed to deliver the onboard processing power needed for smarter and integrated avionics applications.

The EnsembleSeries CIOE-1390 module includes Intel Atom multicore processors and embedded BuiltSAFE technology for flight safety certification. It is intended for rotary-wing platforms and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles.

Ike Song, vice president and general manager of Mercury’s Mission Systems group, commented, “We are seeing a significant increase in the requirements for manned and unmanned platforms to have their fused sensor streams, platform management, and effector controls such as avionics and vetronics flight safety certified for both defence and commercial aerospace applications.”

Single-core processors increasingly lack the performance required to drive next-generation smart platforms, and future roadmap support from single-core safety-critical chip fabricators is diminishing.

This new module from Mercury looks to solve both this performance and availability challenge by delivering design assurance level (DAL)-C artifacts for mission-critical, flight safety-certifiable applications.

The new module delivers a full x86 processing architecture for embedding into applications that must be deployed in the harshest environments.

Song added, “Mercury is collaborating with technology leaders like Intel to deliver the most cutting-edge flight safety-certifiable multicore processing resources needed to power our customers’ most advanced and contemporary platforms while leveraging the latest commercial technologies, reinforcing our commitment to Innovation that Matters.”

EnsembleSeries CIOE-1390 modules are expected to be available in the first quarter of calendar year 2020.