Lockheed Martin delivered a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution to the US Navy last year to run sonar systems in nuclear submarines. The solutions involved Apple Xserve systems using G4 processors and a Red Hat Linux-based operating system. . . .
Lockheed Martin delivered a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution to the US Navy last year to run sonar systems in nuclear submarines. The solutions involved Apple Xserve systems using G4 processors and a Red Hat Linux-based operating system. While few people noticed the announcements made by Terra Soft, makers of Yellow Dog Linux, the event triggered ripples in the industry.

The Lockheed Martin Linux systems varied in two respects from the standard solution of the Apple Xserve. First, the solution did not use Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Secondly, Lockheed Martin built their own chassis and only used the internals of the Xserve. Lockheed Martin wanted the G4 PowerPC chips and Linux to provide a low heat, low power consumption solution. On a nuclear submarine, such features are essential.

In the past, the Navy relied heavily on older embedded solutions, which offered little ability to deploy software. The embedded systems, for example, could not adapt to Web Services that deliver geographic information (GIS) needed in the sonar process. A HPC Linux solution gave users the ability to adapt to various formats of data and encryption, which is critical to the timely delivery of data.

The PowerPC opened a whole new era, since it enabled engineers to use software, not hardware, for large computing jobs. Lockheed Martin's engineers discovered they could do more with a PowerPC with AltiVec than a traditional Digital Signal Processor (DSP), because it allows for an adaptive, flexible computing platform.

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