CHELMSFORD, Mass. – March 17, 2011 – Mercury Computer Systems Inc., (NASDAQ: MRCY, www.mc.com), a trusted ISR subsystems provider, announced it has joined the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), and has released the first software product layered on OFA’s OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) open software stack. Called OpenMPI/OFED, the new product gives designers of ISR subsystems a choice of including standards-based Open MPI middleware without sacrificing performance.
“I am thrilled to welcome Mercury as our newest member and to congratulate them on the launch of their OpenMPI/OFED product,” said Jim Ryan, chairman of the OpenFabrics Alliance. “Mercury’s work is compelling because it applies OFED software to a new category of real-time high performance embedded applications and systems, including support for the serial RapidIO® switched fabric.”
In support of Mercury’s Open Architecture Initiative for the high performance embedded computer market, two new capabilities are being introduced: OpenMPI communications software providing the open standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) API to applications, and an OFED implementation, a lower level communications layer on which Open MPI resides. Together, these capabilities provide ISR application portability with extremely efficient communications with the embedded computer’s data plane fabrics such as serial RapidIO, 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand.
OFED, an open source software distribution containing a standard fabric access API, is widely adopted in the High Performance Computing (HPC) community. Mercury brings OFED to the real-time high performance embedded computing space with a fabric-independent and optimized implementation that includes high bandwidth, low latency data transfer support. Mercury has enabled OFED-based middleware packages, such as Open MPI, to run on embedded systems without sacrificing performance. This expands the impact and reach of OFED and its robust software ecosystem from the HPC/server market segments to now include the real-time, high performance embedded computer market.
Open MPI/OFED middleware provides an abstraction layer between the hardware and the customer application, thus preserving the software investment over time. This not only enables user software to be leveraged from platform generation to platform generation, but also allows rapid code migration from HPC-based systems, such as high-end workstations and blade servers, to traditional embedded computer systems.
“With OpenMPI/OFED, we see a 10x improvement compared to the previous generation Ethernet Open MPI performance, and with the newer serial RapidIO-based embedded systems we achieved a 1.5x improvement beyond the performance of a straightforward port of the Open MPI and OFED software to the platform,” said Steve Patterson, vice president of Defense Product Management at Mercury Computer Systems. “In one large customer program of record, OpenMPI/OFED was benchmarked on a system with more than 48 PowerPC®/AltiVec™ nodes. OpenMPI/OFED was selected by the customer based on its high performance, ease-of-use and application code investment protection,” Patterson added.
Mercury recently completed their second quarter of OpenMPI/OFED shipments for the PowerPC/serial RapidIO Ensemble product lines. OpenMPI/OFED is now available for Mercury’s PowerPC and Intel processors, including support for Mercury’s ES7100, ES6000 (OpenVPX) and ES5000 (VXS) products. Support includes drivers for Mercury’s previously announced Protocol Offload Engine Technology™ (POET™) for fabric-independent, high performance data plane transfers with Intel Processors.
Mercury has a long history of advancing the embedded computing market with industry-leading, distributed multi-computing solutions and contributing significantly to industry efforts defining standard software interfaces for application development. OpenMPI/OFED joins previous standards that Mercury led in adoption in the embedded computer market, including most recently OpenSAL and OpenVPX.
Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. – Where Challenges Drive Innovation®
Mercury Computer Systems (www.mc.com, NASDAQ: MRCY) is a best of breed provider of open, application-ready, multi-INT subsystems for the ISR market. With 25+ years’ experience in embedded computing, superior domain expertise in radar, EW, EO/IR, C4I, and sonar applications, and more than 300 successful program deployments including Aegis, Global Hawk, and Predator, Mercury’s Services and Systems Integration team leads the industry in partnering with customers to design and integrate system-level solutions that minimize program risk, maximize application portability, and accelerate customers’ time to market.
Mercury is based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and serves customers worldwide through a broad network of direct sales offices, subsidiaries, and distributors.
Forward-Looking Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including those relating to the products and services described herein. You can identify these statements by the use of the words “may,” “will,” “should,” “plans,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “continue,” “estimate,” “project,” “intend,” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, including unforeseen weakness in the Company’s markets, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, continued funding of defense programs, the timing of such funding, changes in the U.S. Government’s interpretation of federal procurement rules and regulations, market acceptance of the Company’s products, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, inability to fully realize the expected benefits from acquisitions and divestitures or delays in realizing such benefits, challenges in integrating acquired businesses and achieving anticipated synergies, changes to export regulations, increases in tax rates, changes to generally accepted accounting principles, difficulties in retaining key employees and customers, unanticipated costs under fixed-price service and system integration engagements, and various other factors beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties also include such additional risk factors as are discussed in the Company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made.
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Contact:
Robert McGrail, Director of ACS Marketing & Corporate Communications
Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.
978-967-1366 / [email protected]
Challenges Drive Innovation is a registered trademark of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. OpenVPX is a trademark of VITA. Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.