Market Research Media

COTS, commercial off-the-shelf, and Application Specific Software are the magic words to open today’s tight military budgets for hundreds IT companies seeking to supply High Performance Computing (HPC) technology solutions for defense market. Military computing requirements are growing exponentially while budgets lag behind. As an example let us consider dynamics of the data overflow from military drones in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• The number of hours flown by drones in Iraq and Afghanistan has sharply increased in the last few years – from 50,000 in 2006 to more than 200,000 in 2009
• The Predators and Reapers are already transmitting 16,000 hours of video each month, to be processed and analyzed on the ground.
• Instead of carrying just one camera, the new UAVs, will soon be able to record video in 10 directions at once. By 2011, that will increase to 30 directions with plans for as many as 65 after that. Camera resolution, frame rate and bit depth are growing as well.
• The Air Force’s top intelligence official, Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, described the situation as “swimming in sensors and drowning in data”.




Market Research Media Ltd forecasts computational requirements of the global Defense HPC community to triple every year to reach 1,000,000 Habu by 2015 (For more information, please see Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015). Habu is a measure of computational performance used by DoD. In 2002, a 1,024-processor IBM system located at the Naval Oceanographic Office MSRC named Habu, was designated the baseline system. Since then computational performance measures are all in “Habu” equivalent units.

As a matter of fact the future computational requirements tend to be grossly underestimated, for example, here is a forecast made in 2005:

“The Department of Defense computational science community will need over 875 HABU equivalents of computing capacity by 2010.” Source: Cray’s press release

The use of COTS have fueled and will fuel growth in Defense HPC Market far beyond expectations. Recently the US Department of Defense, announced that it will upgrade its supercomputer cluster with 2200 Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game console. Here is an excerpt from the order justification form:

With respect to cell processors, a single 1U server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8K while two Sony PS3s cost approximately $600. Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications. Sony is the only firm capable of manufacturing the brand of required hardware without the Government experiencing substantial duplication of cost that would not be recoverable through competition among providers of alternative technology. Using cell processor technology besides the Sony PS3 would cost the Government the equivalent of several years of professional research and engineering effort, in addition to the initial investment of $118,000 made by ARFL/RIT in 2008. Moreover, moving to an alternative technology hardware would also cause duplication of costs associated with redeveloping the software, military systems, and applications already based on the existing Sony PS3 cluster. This will become increasingly relevant as the magnitude of applications and supporting hardware infrastructure likely will increase over time.

Commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) HPC software or hardware are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The use of COTS HPC solutions in combination with Application Specific Software is being mandated across many government agencies, as such products may offer significant savings in procurement and maintenance, reduction of overall system development and costs, and that’s where opportunities lie.