CHELMSFORD, Mass., 18 Aug. 2010. Mercury Computer Systems Inc. in Chelmsford, Mass., is introducing a protocol-agnostic multi-fabric interconnect technology for embedded computing systems such as radar, electronic warfare, and electro-optical/infrared applications that are based on Intel microprocessors. Protocol Offload Engine Technology -- better-known as POET -- forms a bridge between microprocessors and high-speed serial switch fabric technology such as Serial RapidIO, PCI Express, and Gigabit Ethernet.
At its highest level, POET implements standard interfaces to bridge between processors and switch fabrics. Initially POET will support Serial RapidIO and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Future releases will support 40 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand as well as offload protocols such as RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), an InfiniBand-over-Ethernet standard.
Mercury (NASDAQ: MRCY) implements POET technology as intellectual property (IP) in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) from either Xilinx Inc. in San Jose, Calif., or from Altera Corp. in San Jose, Calif. "By offloading and accelerating standard protocols, POET simultaneously facilitates high bandwidth and low latency operation giving 10 Gigabit Ethernet the guaranteed, deterministic delivery of Serial RapidIO," says Charlie Frazer, director of IP Technology at the Mercury Advanced Computing Solutions division.
POET can improve size, weight and power (SWaP) constraints in subsystems by providing local switching in the FPGA between several fabric ports to create distributed mesh networks, thereby eliminating the need for a centralized switch fabric card, Mercury officials say. Through industry standard internal interfaces, customers can integrate their own downloadable firmware with POET.
For more information contact Mercury online at www.mc.com.
