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Apple Businesses Hardware

US Navy buys Apple as Linux Platform 239

Posted by michael from the apples-under-the-sea dept.
Nine Mirrors Turning writes "According to the Register the US Navy has ordered 260 XServe servers running Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft Solutions. Terra Soft is the only reseller allowed to resell Apple hardware with a third-party operating system installed. The XServes will be modified by a unnamed third-party and will be running a custom kernel. The XServes are destined for US Navy submarines and will be used for real-time image processing. I do wonder how many will be installed on each sub, though. Are we talking clustering here? I didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships."
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US Navy buys Apple as Linux Platform More

US Navy buys Apple as Linux Platform

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  • number one (Score:5, Funny)

    by Councilor Hart ( 673770 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:41AM (#6634784)
    didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships.
    Do you think that the rest of the world would fear the USA military so much if their front-line troops were running windows?
    • the military did try it out for it's mobile units.

      http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article09-20 3

    • Re:number one (Score:4, Interesting)

      by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:11AM (#6635073)
      Actually, armored cavalry and selected mechanized infantry units have exchanged their radios for NT 4.0 based chat applications.

    • Re:number one (Score:5, Informative)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @01:38PM (#6636592) Homepage Journal
      The Navy actually has a long history of using Apple computers for image processing on submarines going back to the closely held Cluster Knave project. I knew that there were efforts underway to port this application to the TAC-3 based platform running xwindows back in the early 90's but since I have lost contact with that program. Apparently, they are still using it but in a Linux based environment. Even so, the Xserves are ideal for this project in that they are compact, require very little energy to run comparatively and they have Altivec which can be very useful for vector based calculations.

    • Re:number one (Score:5, Funny)

      by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @02:33PM (#6637319)
      Do you think that the rest of the world would fear the USA military so much if their front-line troops were running windows?

      I would. Hell, one BSOD could light off every missle in their payload, each randomly pointed at a different location!

    • Number two. (Score:3, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      I'm afraid our front line troops mostly do [army.mil] run [zdnet.co.uk] Windows [gcn.com]. This is one of the few military applications where Microsoft wouldn't have an almost automatic lock: almost nobody uses NT as a high-performance computing platform.
    • some do. An aircraft carrier running win2k crashed a while back and had to be towed back to port.
    • A few weeks ago I attended a luncheon where the state of computer systems on the ABRAHAM LINCOLN was discussed. While controlling the battle force during the Iraq war computer systems were rebooted on 45 minute intervals because they weren't stable: running Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Hopefully this will be fixed when the LINCOLN goes through her overhaul.

  • Uh-oh.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by MImeKillEr ( 445828 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:44AM (#6634813) Homepage Journal
    Now SCO's going to have to sue the Navy and Apple.

    • Re:Uh-oh.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @02:36PM (#6637382)
      Now SCO's going to have to sue the Navy and Apple.

      In other news today: The U.S. Navy today responded to a lawsuit by privately-held company SCO by invading their headquarters, and bombarding it into the ground with cruise missles.

      When reached for comment, Admiral trigger-happy said "Fuck it. They were pissing everybody off. I just got bored."

  • Even the submitter didn't read the article (Score:5, Informative)

    by karrde ( 853 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:45AM (#6634823) Homepage Journal

    From post: Are we talking clustering here?

    From Article On board clusters of the Apple rack server will be used for real-time image processing.

    Emphasis mine

    • The navy has somewhere around 50 "attack" subs, and 15 ballistic missile subs (counting ones that are on order or under construction, but have already been named).

      So... if they were spread evenly across ALL the subs, we'd be looking at about 4 Xserves per sub. Whether they'd cluster all 4, or cluster 3 with 1 spare, or cluster 2 with 2 spare, I don't know.

      (Personally, as someone who's clustered Linux a bit, I'd cluster all 4. It's a cluster, for crying out loud, it's supposed to be redundant, and if y

  • Why XServes for Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DLWormwood ( 154934 ) <wormwood@meCOMMA.com minus punct> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:46AM (#6634843) Homepage
    I'm a Mac developer, so I have a love of the platform. But using XServes just to run Linux seems kind of strange at this time. The only systems Apple currently sells with decent performance with full exploitation of DDR are the recently released G5 towers. I would think that Apple would need to update the XServer line before such Linux use would make sense, since that OS currently runs better on Intel/AMD iron.

    • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by oscarmv ( 603165 ) <oscarmv@maCOFFEEc.com minus caffeine> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:59AM (#6634972) Homepage
      Most likely the stuff the XServes will be doing benefits greatly from Altivec acceleration. IIRC there's a lot of vectorising that can be done on most image processing algorithms.

      In that case PowerPC servers are a given, and Apple's are probably some of the best on bang for the buck.
      • I don't think the navy gives a flying fish about "bang for the buck". Because their systems have to be so thorougly te$ted (we hope), $10,000 dollars in difference in cost of a single computer matters not a whit.

        If, on the other hand, they'd already tested the software on that hardware, THEN you might see cost savings that make them sit up and take notice.

    • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      One reason may be because of the stagnant (near zero) sales of xserves since the g5 announcement, the navy prolly got a killer deal helping apple clear inventory

    • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tomasset ( 26814 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:31AM (#6635296)
      As someone else has already pointed out, there are some architectural advantages in the PPC vs. the x86 comparissons, more specifically the use of Altivec extensions in the current G4s (and of course G5s).

      Some tests have already proven that the G5 is not overwhelmingly superior to the G4 when using Altivec code (just a linear increase with the clock rates). Thus waiting for G5 systems is probably not needed in this case.

      As the article clearly states, these systems will be used for signal processing applications, where the vector extensions really shine. So in terms of computational power/required energy to run (very important in submarines, i assume) i can image that the G4 are very competitive.

      As for the Linux vs. Os X, well, we do have to agree that Linux is very well supported and already qualified for many tasks/contracts (which Os X might not??).

      T
      • There are lots of reasons that low power consumption on a submarine is a good thing, but the low power consumption isn't really one of them in and of itself. Modern subs use electrolysis to get oxygen for god sakes. Of course, not needing as much cooling, not requiring as much infrastructure, being smaller are all good things.

      • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by valkraider ( 611225 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @01:59PM (#6636888) Journal
        computational power/required energy to run (very important in submarines, i assume)

        Because god only knows you have to watch power consumption when you're sitting on a nuclear power plant. ;)

        I know - this probably has no technical merit - but it is worth noting I would imagine, that nuclear power is abundant and hot - so the power/heat specs of the PC are probably null and void...

      • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tbone1 ( 309237 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @02:17PM (#6637106) Homepage
        Well, read The Hunt for Red October for another reason. Submarines hate, and I mean hate making noise. I would imagine that anything with x86 would be tantamount to having a mariachi band playing in the room.

        Yes, Lintel/Wintel machines can be designed to be quiet, but those off-the-rack XServes are probably quieter, at least in a bang-for-the-buck kind of comparison. (Now a cluster of Cubes, ...)

        • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by SirDrinksAlot ( 226001 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @03:08PM (#6637870) Journal
          You've never been in the same room as an XServe have you? HEH.

          An XServe has like 9 Blower fans in it and sounds like an old dust buster but louder.

          Luckily they are easily muted by being put into sound dampening cabinets which work extremely well. Unfortunately for a submarine those things are rather large too. I wouldnt put it past them to gut the XServes and put them into their own fabricated cases.

          I have yet to see a high end silent 1U server Because of the blower situation. Theres nothing silent about blower fans.

          • An XServe has like 9 Blower fans in it and sounds like an old dust buster but louder.

            The speed of the XServe fans is controlled by software.

            Out of the box, an XServe will even stop rotating some fans when the temperature is low enough. It is not unthinkable to hack the XServe for a full stop of the fans when the mission requires so. Additionally, in the unfortunate case of some part failing due to excessive temperature (not that probable, since for deployment in a submarine ruggedized parts are used

        • Well, read The Hunt for Red October for another reason. Submarines hate, and I mean hate making noise. I would imagine that anything with x86 would be tantamount to having a mariachi band playing in the room.

          An Xserve is at least as loud - if not louder - than name brand (and probably generic as well) 1U x86 boxes.

        • Re:Why XServes for Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by miniver ( 1839 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @06:03PM (#6639908) Homepage
          Submarines hate, and I mean hate making noise.

          Hint -- put the hardware in a sound-proof cabinet that's isolated with rubber shock mounts from the rest of the boat. No more noise problems.

          Of course the major sound source on a boat is the reactor/propulsion system...

      • Some tests have already proven that the G5 is not overwhelmingly superior to the G4 when using Altivec code (just a linear increase with the clock rates)

        I would find that quite surprising - each G5 CPU has two Altivec units within it (i.e., four total in a 2xG5 system).

        Obviously you're unlikely to get perfect parallelism out of them, but I doubt a second unit would have been added if it was of no benefit in typical code - it sounds more likely that the test you quote was a particularly poorly performi
    • I guess one of the reasons why they opted for the Xserve over the G5 towers is the fact that two or three Xserve boxes take up less room in a rack than a G5 tower does. A G5 tower probably eats up a bit more power and produces a bit more heat... though that may or may not be a problem for them, but I'm guess size is.

      Also having the hard drive or hard drives hot-swappable would be a good thing to reduce down time since it would take less time to swap a failed drive with a good drive in an Xserve than pull o
    • Well, since it is the Navy, they probably just wanted to use an established product, rather than a new one that has untold amounts of bugs in it's rev 1 release (just cuz it's hardware doesn't make it perfect).
    • One of the key points in the article was that they were running a customized kernal. The original was probably based on Linux. As a result of this, it's probably simpler and cheaper to go with a YDL setup rather than try and reoptimize for BSD.

      If they went with Apple's XServe OS X, there is a lot of other stuff in there they would have to contend with that could probably break what they are doing. So rather than spend time working out the differences, they chose the route of, "Go with what you know."

    • Re:Why didn't they buy a Sun? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gamgee5273 ( 410326 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:00AM (#6634985) Journal
      Major price difference. A coworker of mine has a proposal under consideration, spec'd-out using either Apple or Sun hardware, and the Sun boxes are much more expensive.

      • Size considerations (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MohammedNiyalSayeed ( 644154 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:11AM (#6635071) Homepage

        Another major difference between the two is the size; you can stack a lot more XServes than you can Sun machines of similar power (420R, 220R, not to mention the Enterprise 450, which is HUGE) given a fixed amount of space.

        It is reasonable to assume that, since these are being put into submarines, space is of a limited quantity, so the reduced physical profile of the XServes may also have played a part in the decision making process.

        • Re:Size considerations (Score:3, Informative)

          by -stax ( 34630 )
          Another major difference between the two is the size; you can stack a lot more XServes than you can Sun machines of similar power (420R, 220R, not to mention the Enterprise 450, which is HUGE) given a fixed amount of space.

          Um, the E450 is huge because it can hold 20 disks. It also supports 4 processors, which the current xserve's do not. Not to mention that it is no longer available from sun.

          The closest comparison I can find to a Apple Xserve in sun's product line would be a 1u V210 which lists for

      • I don't think the U.S navy is too concerned about the price difference between Sun and Apple hardware.

  • Finally... (Score:4, Funny)

    by shachart ( 471014 ) <shachar-slashdot&vipe,technion,ac,il> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:47AM (#6634851)
    Finally the Penguin will submerge at sea... :)

  • SCO vs. Navy (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) * on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:58AM (#6634960) Homepage Journal
    SCO: You owe us $699 per computer!
    Navy: OK - how about we give you half a million and you keep the change?
    SCO: GREAT!
    Navy: OK, tell us the address to send it to.
    SCO: <gives corporate address>
    Navy: Tomahawk targeting confirmed - you have a go for launch.
    • Why can't things be modded past 5. ;) I knew my military earmarked tax dollars would *someday* go to an appropriate use.
    • Only problem is the Tomahawks cost a whole lot more than half a million dollars. Now if they still have any Iowa class battleships in service, how about some nice cheap 20" shells? As long as it's a costal target, it's much more cost effective. ;-)

  • no one remembers the NT crash? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Frac ( 27516 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:00AM (#6634986)
    "I didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships."

    They probably looked at alternatives after Windows NT crashed from a division-by-zero error and left a navy ship dead on the water for several hours [gcn.com].
    • I'm sure this incident affected them, but there has to be more than that. I did some work for a Navy contractor and they were told to migrate their applications away from Microsoft and onto Linux -- I believe the ultimate goal is to have all of the in-field deployed systems on Navy ships running on non-MS OSes.

      The transition is pretty far-reaching. The Navy was even balking at using a Windows server for a web service back end that would feed info to a Linux (java) front end!

      Maybe there are some intell
      • ok, I've heard lots of debates on the suitablity of linux for various uses.

        But is there someone who really debates the use of linux over ISS for WEB applications anymore? I mean for god sakes, the web is designed for unix technology, the entire thing was built around a unix foundation and is designed for unix systems to interoperate at the very core. In this case linux is just a cheap *nix. And when it comes to web there is no reasonable debate, *nix wins, each time, every time.
    • They probably looked at alternatives after Windows NT crashed from a division-by-zero error and left a navy ship dead on the water for several hours.

      As has been noted numerous times before in pretty much every forum available, NT had little to do with it. That's probably not the best article to use as "proof" either - would you believe the technical competency of someone who said "your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the

    • The publisher of the article you cite later distanced themselves from the article, labeled it early speculation. According to people on the ship and the software developers NT was not at fault.

      Web Myth: WinNT failure stopped ship [slashdot.org]

  • not really surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110.anu@edu@au> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:13AM (#6635091) Journal
    when you think about it - some of the key advantages that Apple technologies have slot in perfectly with what customers like the Navy would want. The G4 and the rest of the PPC line work very well in specialised applications where vectorisation can take place (and when they're being used for one specific application, this optimisation can be done), and what's more they'll perform very well while putting out less heat and using up less power.

    When you're on a sub that requires every inch of space to be utilised, these are attributes that make a computing system very attractive.

    Once Apple deploys the G5s into these puppies, I think there's going to be a lot of organisations looking at their present hardware rigs in a very critical light.

    -- james
    • "When you're on a sub that requires every inch of space to be utilised, these are attributes that make a computing system very attractive.
      Once Apple deploys the G5s into these puppies, I think there's going to be a lot of organisations looking at their present hardware rigs in a very critical light."

      "Ensign, engage Silent Mode"
      "Aye captain, let me just switch on these 250 fans here."

  • Trolling the silly responses (Score:5, Interesting)

    by coyote4til7 ( 189857 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:30AM (#6635282) Homepage
    Why not use cheap intel hardware seems like a really strange question in this context. If memory serves, subs run in the 100s of billions of dollars a unit. And the nuclear ones stay down six months at a stretch. No Fed-ex delivery of replacement parts. You can't buy Dells with 28% return rates. "Uhm, Captin, the computer is down again. Can you tell the Admiral that we're going to have to take it off-line again while I trouleshoot." Don't think so.

    The more interesting question is why Apple instead of Sun hardware. Given the XServes were supposedly originally designed to the NIH's specs, it may be that they're the most cost-effective answer to the problem.

    And... completely off topic... can someone please tell Mr. Bush that outside of Texas it's nuclear, not nuke-u-leer.
    • I don't think anyone is dumb enough to pronounce it as nuke-you-leer - "nucular" is what people tend to do.

      And, as many people have observed before, if that's the worst criticism of him you can think of...

    • Re:Trolling the silly responses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Halvard ( 102061 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @02:28PM (#6637255)

      If memory serves, subs run in the 100s of billions of dollars a unit.

      Old age is catching up with you. Divide by 100(s). I served on 2 Los Angeles Class submarines. The first, kind of in between 1st and 2nd flight boats, cost a little in excess of US$750 million in 1985 US$. The second, a second flight boat, cost about US$900 million. Ohio class boats, aka Tridents cost about $2.5 billion. B2 bombers cost about US$4 billion. Sans weapons systems.

    • Nukeyewlar (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GlobalEcho ( 26240 )
      Most slashdotters are too young to remember, but Former President Carter [jimmycarterlibrary.org] also uses that annoying pronunciation. And he has an advanced degree in nuclear physics (as well as having been a submarine guy)!
    • The problem with Sun hardware on submarines...they weigh too much. 10 new Sunfire servers and that sub will never see the surface again.

      skinny was here.
    • vs. Intel:
      1) Heat/Power Use
      2) Space
      3) Cost

      vs. Sun:
      1) Space
      2) Heat/Power Use
      3) Cost

      Given that it is a submarine, space and heat are more important that cost. Especially if in the same volume, for the same price, for roughly the same processing power, you use significantly less power and generate less heat. (Don't forget that less heat means less power too cool the sub as well, or that more fans = more noise.)

      (BTW, XServes are hot-swappable. I doubt the Navy doesn't have a set of fault-toleran

    • Silly silly silly... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      You can't buy Dells with 28% return rates. "Uhm, Captin, the computer is down again. Can you tell the Admiral that we're going to have to take it off-line again while I trouleshoot." Don't think so.

      I seem to recall an ep of JAG where precisely that happened. Of course, they changed the culprit from the vendor QA department to North Korean Intelligence...

      The more interesting question is why Apple instead of Sun hardware.

      I very much doubt if either the Navy or Lockheed cares what the specific hardware pl

  • ...US Navy submarines and will be used for real-time image processing...

    Did this stand out to anyone else? Image processing on a sub? I wasn't aware that they could see underwater. But I'll bet that's what's being worked-on here... Hmmm.

    • Re:Um... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Micro$will ( 592938 )
      It's probably not image processing, but more like processing sonar into images. I beleive the US sub fleet has had this type of system for a few years now. It can take any sonar info, passive (underwater microphones) or active (ping), and create some sort of image out of it and spit out an at least rough guestimate as to what it is (dolphin, ship, fishing boat, photon torpedo, etc). They may be even further along than that, I'm not sure.
    • Did this stand out to anyone else? Image processing on a sub? I wasn't aware that they could see underwater. But I'll bet that's what's being worked-on here... Hmmm.

      In addition to periscope images, they could process and analyze downlinks of data. Imagine people on subs analyzing data in real time with intel folks on shore/targets.

  • Noise? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alcimedes ( 398213 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#6635722)
    I'm just surprised with out noise concious submarine captains/designers are that they'd want Xserves. from everything i've heard, pretty much all 1U hardware is damn noisey. guess the space is worth more than the price.

    • Re:Noise? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Zifnab32 ( 592169 )
      Acording to the artical *ahem* the company was contracted to build a custom enclosure for the X-Servers. Nothing I have seen describes these, but they could easially include some sort of silent cooling.

  • How much are they paying for these things? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07, 2003 @12:37PM (#6635908)
    The article [theregister.co.uk] says the deal includes 260 XServes and is "worth $1.9 million in hardware alone." Since these are being used for "High Performance Computing," presumably they are Cluster Node XServes [theregister.co.uk], which are designed for exactly that. So why is the average price per system $1,900,000/260 = $7300, when the Cluster Node XServe goes for $2799 retail? Is the Navy getting a lot of extra hardware to go with this?

  • Brave Navy Program Manager needs to take a bow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @12:44PM (#6635962)
    having worked on a few govt. programs using DSP and software radios - the G4 is the defacto standard used by folks.. but usually running VxWorks and using proprietary solutions like this one where the accepted use is to buy some dual or quad PPC single board computers.

    The problem is that in almost every case - like the one i referenced, these systems are still.. today.. .almost ALWYAS less than 500Mhz G4's. In fact, this 466 is a model i've never seen before. A project i worked on was using state of the art 300 Mhz G4's. Many of these solutions alos run near the $10k price range.

    In fairness, many of these SBCs are built to extreme timing tolerances, have insane backplane speed and often have RF gear built in... in the case of real-time processing. you _have_ to have this, and therefore, these costs are justified.

    But a lot of the time, they simply wanted to use them for post-processing of data.. not real time.. so everything you made up in speed on these highly custom boards was useless...

    i always wondered - silently - wtf is wrong with you people (engineers who come up with the "requirement" to run SBCs for post processing")? You can get 1U dual 1 GHz G4's to run the SAME SOFTWARE for 1/3 the price? Why won't you even concider it? ARRRGH!!!!

    Well, it seems that there is some very very very very brave program manager in the Navy who stuck his/her neck out and proved what i always thought in silence... that this buying of slow G4-based SBC's to do DSP post processing was stupid and silly. The answer was to get some Xserves and do it two to 4 times as fast for 1/3 the money.

    This is not so much a coup for TerraSoft - though, of course, they did the "hard work"... but let me tell you.. whoever the Navy PM was took a LOT of shit for their suggestion to use Macs. I guarantee you that.

    I hope we'll be able to find out who that PM was.. i'd liek to talk to them and find out how they made the sell...

    Apple computer is a BAD WORD in the Government.. and this was really a coup on the part of everyone involved... but don't think that its a novel idea or somehow "amazing". Using dozens of rack-mount G4 macs has been the elephant in the middle of the room solution to literally thousands of DoD problems for at least 5 years... its actually pretty pathetic and sad how long it took for it to make it to prime time.
    • damnit.. sorry..

      Single board computers like THIS one.... [synergymicro.com]running multiple G4's at 466 Mhz (be still my beating heart! BLAZING speed)

      note to self... PREVIEW DAMINT!

    • Re:Brave Navy Program Manager needs to take a bow (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We (NASA) are one of the largest purchasers of Apple hardware in the US (and yes, we often take much shit for this honor). There is a tremendous amount of internal strife (at NASA) cause by a few Mac-ophobes who are constantly trying to force Apple out of our offices and labs.

      I cannot count the number of times we must weigh political credibility vs. pursuing the technically correct solution and have to bit our tongues about suggesting an Apple derived solutuion. I too must hand it to the PM for having th
  • Certainly it's cheaper to get the Xserve sans OS X. From the article -- "We're the only Apple reseller on the planet with a licence to install a non-Apple operating system," says Staats.

    Regardless I always thought the whole Apple advantage was the way having hardware and OS under one roof allowed you to make great "gestaltic" solutions. Why pay the Xserve premium and get G4 powered rack hardware to install an OS that's available for cheaper, and argueably better supported, x86 hardware? (And I've been a Mac user for over a decade and even tried out YDL and LPPC a couple of times... this isn't flame bait.)

    Still, either Yellow Dog must be doing *something* better than Red Hat is (maintenance price?) or they must be running something that was designed *explicitly for* AltiVec.

  • As it happens, I work on this program ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by miniver ( 1839 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @05:55PM (#6639818) Homepage

    As you can imagine, there are a lot of details about this program that are not publicly releaseable, even if they aren't classified. You can find about more about ARCI via Google, but start with this PDF [lockheedmartin.com]; it's mostly marketing pitch, but it does describe what we're doing.

    Background: Twenty-first century technological innovation demands that today's warfare systems become increasingly adaptable and upgradeable. Exploiting research and development to ensure U.S. forces maintain a decisive lead in technologies critical to military transformation, the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment in the Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion (ARCI) Program has demonstrated the ability to restore a remarkable acoustic advantage to U.S. submarines. ARCI demonstrated, through the use of COTS equipment, the ability to rapidly install a marked technological refresh in equipment at a lower cost.
    In real-world exercises and operations, the ARCI submarine sonar system has unequivocally demonstrated that U.S. submarines retain a clear acoustic advantage. Use of COTS equipment in ARCI has substantially reduced costs with significantly improved processing capability.

    Description: The ARCI program is a phased effort to provide the submarine force with a common sonar that is far more capable and flexible than earlier designs. An open-systems architecture (OSA) exploiting commercial processing development permits the use of complex algorithms that could not previously be accommodated. COTS based processors and OSA technology and systems allow onboard computing power to grow at nearly the same rate as commercial industry's. This facilitates regular updates to both software and hardware with minimal impact on submarine scheduling.
    Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems (NE&SS)-Undersea Systems is the lead contractor for the U.S. Navy's ARCI Program. This multi-phase development initiative provides for sonar systems upgrades on existing legacy submarine sonar systems including the SSN-688, SSN-688I, SSN-21, and SSBN-726 class submarines. The ARCI Program features the installation of a common, cost-effective, more capable and flexible COTS-based open systems architecture.

    Next Step: Lockheed Martin is leading an effort to raise the reliability to guarantee operational effectiveness for predictable operating periods. Known as Maintenance Free Operating Periods (MFOP), this concept will transform maintenance practices, supply support systems, training concepts, and further enhance operational performance while reducing life-cycle costs.

    Features:

    • Enables U.S. undersea superiority as a result of the insertion of leading-edge technology into the Fleet
    • Dramatically improves towed array performance and enhances tactical control
    • Advances spherical, hull, and high frequency array processing and performance
    • Use of COTS with open systems architecture allows for continuous updates and reduces total ownership costs

    I can offer some insights into the factors driving this particular decision:

    • Power / Size / Price - The Xserve computers are dual-processor 1.33GHz G4s, in a 1u form-factor. Compared to the equipment that these units are replacing, we're improving the MFLOP density for the equivalent space, while reducing the cost by a factor of 5 or more.
    • Compatability - The Xserves are a fraction of the COTS hardware that we're installing. Much of what we're doing is replacing HP servers with generic Linux servers (running Red Hat Linux). We chose Yellow Dog Linux for its compatibility with Red Hat Linux. Using OS/X wouldn't make sense since these servers are being using as compute engines in a cluster, not displays.

    You have to keep in mind the physical environment of a submarine: there isn't a lot of space on a boat for active equipment, much less spares. Redundancy is a must, as is reliability.

  • Photonic masts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by snStarter ( 212765 ) on Friday August 08, 2003 @01:43AM (#6642624)
    Keep in mind that the VIRGINIA class is designed without traditional periscopes. Instead high-definition cameras will take the place of the traditional optical periscope. So you can imagine why you'd want to be able to do some serious image manipulation.

    Of course sonar systems would benefit from compute servers as well.
  • ...a Beowulf-class cluster of those!

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