Sky helps screen airport luggage for bombs

Vivid Technologies of Woburn, Mass., is using the Skybolt multiprocessor from Sky Computers Inc. of Chelmsford, Mass. (http://www.sky.com), for its airport explosive detection systems, which use dual-energy x-ray techniques to analyze the atomic number, size, and other qualities of objects within checked luggage to identify potential threats. Sky has shipped more than 700 Skybolt multiprocessors to Vivid, which has sold more than 100 bomb detectors throughout Europe. Vivid designers use multiple Skybolt boards for the compute-intensive image processing necessary for fast and accurate detection. - J.K.