The Beginning
In the early 1980s, the array processor market was in its early development stages. Jay Bertelli, who was with Analogic Corporation, believed there was an opportunity to develop a unique product functionality and market delivery approach, so he left Analogic to form Mercury Computer Systems in 1981. Mr. Bertelli launched Mercury to develop high-speed accelerator modules, and thus named the company Mercury Computer Systems, after Mercury, the speedy, winged messenger of the ancient gods. He spent more than a year raising capital and building the foundation for the company. In early 1983, Bob Frisch, who serves as Mercury's Vice President of Advanced Development, and John Nitzsche, who retired from the company in 1999, joined Mr. Bertelli in launching what has become a very successful and profitable organization.
At that time, venture capital firms received more than 100 business proposals per week and had little interest in supporting Mercury's venture. Michael Schneider, a Vice President of Data General, believed in Mercury's capability to deliver a solution to a customer problem, and provided start-up funds and office and lab space. Mercury raised approximately $1.7 million, including investments from Data General, private individuals, and the Memorial Drive Trust. In 1987, the company raised an additional $3 million from Massachusetts Mutual.
Mission
Mercury has evolved from primarily producing board-level hardware to providing a total system solution, though its mission to assist customers in solving extremely challenging computing problems has remained the same. Some of the most skilled signal and image processing applications and systems engineers in the industry provide pre- and post-sales customer support to customers in a broad range of applications.
Industry Standards
In 1995, the Mercury-developed RACEway Interlink was adopted as an ANSI standard (ANSI/VITA 5-1994); and its next-generation switch fabric standard, RACE++® debuted in 1998. Today, Mercury is developing high-performance solutions with RapidIO®, the next-generation industry standard architecture co-developed with Motorola Inc.
Today
Mercury has grown from eight associates working in borrowed space to more than 700 associates in offices and, support offices and centers of excellence worldwide. Annual revenue has grown from $1 million in 1984 to $223.7 million in fiscal year 2007.
Mercury has experienced tremendous growth and has invested aggressively in its people, in developing new technologies, and in driving industry standards. Key to Mercury's success is the associates' determination and strong commitment to customer success.
In November 2007, as part of the Company's ongoing succession planning process, the Board of Directors appointed Mark Aslett as Mercury's President and Chief Executive Offier and elected him as a member of the Board. Mr. Bertelli transitioned from President and Chief Executive Officer to Executive Chairman of the Board, and in July 2008 retired from the Company and became Non-Executive Chairman of the Board.
Technology Milestones
2008 2007 | Mercury introduces SR-110 10GE VXS Gateway, a revolutionary network-centric building block that seamless moves data between interconnect fabrics Mercury unveils the PowerBlock 50, an ultra-compact, ruggedized system that delivers more than 100 GFLOPS of processing power in a 4" x 5" x 6" footprint Mercury receives U.S. Government R&D development prime contract for JCREW technology demonstration that includes X-Midas platform-independent software framework Mercury provides AdvancedTCA products and services to Hughes for commercial satellite base station platform Mercury's synthetic vision display enables helicopter pilots to "see" surroundings in zero visibility Mercury establishes wholly owned subsidiary, Visage Imaging, for life sciences and medical businesses Mercury and NVIDIA provide oil industry with data compuation on the fly Mercury releases software development kit for PLAYSTATION3 for high-performance computing Mercury ships highest performing digital receiver in an XMC form factor in the industry Mercury and IPV Limited bring the power of Cell technology to the professional video market Mercury introduces complete UAV solution for cost-effective remote sensing applications |
| 2006 | Mercury announces partnership with Mentor Graphics and development of first Cell BE processor-based platform for EDA market Mercury collaborates with Boston University to deliver biotech applications on the Cell BE processor Mercury receives FDA approval for Visage PACS and Visage CS solutions for medical image management Mercury named market leader in embedded defense electronics Mercury introduces first rugged Cell BE processor-based computer - the PowerBlock 200 |
| 2005 | Mercury announces ExamineRT Server/Thin Client volume rendering and 3D visualization solution for 3D imaging in PACS Mercury delivers ruggedized, conduction-cooled 800 MHz 7447A 6U VME multicomputer that approaches 0.5 TeraFLOPs to address harshest environments Momentum Computer business unit announces industry-first dual Pentium M-based SBC for PICMG 2.16; CCR-200 doubles compute density in single-slot PICMG 2.16 backplane Mercury enables high-speed data movement for FPGA-based applications with FDK 2.0 Mercury's Ensemble2 is the first high-speed Serial RapidIO AdvancedTCA platform for telecom infrastructure |
| 2004 | Mercury announces XB Series high-density imaging and visualization platforms for medical imaging, geosciences, and visualization/simulation markets Mercury and Ziehm Imaging accelerate 3D medical image reconstruction by 40X Mercury introduces portfolio of imaging and visualization solutions for life sciences; comprehensive products accelerate critical 3D imaging applications Mercury announces Intel 32/64 Xeon-based imaging and visualization server solutions Mercury brings FPGA computing to a ruggedized 3U CompactPCI module for signal processing application environments severely constrained by size, weight and power Mercury ships first wave of RapidIO next-generation mezzanine cards; new XMCs enhance flexibility of RapidIO-based systems Mercury announces first multi-chassis, Serial RapidIO systems; ImpactRT 3200 and PowerStream 7000 enable twice the system performance Mercury announces XR9, the PowerPC 970FX-based rack-mountable server solutions optimized for high-performance applications Mercury and Tundra unveil Ensemble, the Serial RapidIO AdvancedTCA development platform Mercury boosts RACE++ system performance with new PowerPC 7447; backward-compatible G4+ daughtercards double speed of on-chip FFTs Mercury Integrates FPGA computing into RACE++ MCJ6 FCN VME system |
| 2003 | Mercury announces the XR family of scalable open-system multicomputers based on Intel® processors and a Linux® operating environment Mercury unveils the first multicomputer system to incorporate the RapidIO switch fabric architecture, the ImpactRT™ 3100 Mercury integrates FPGAs with PowerPC microprocessors in a RACE++ multicomputer, increasing performance up to 50X faster |
| 2002 | Mercury announces a high-compute density PCI system that scales up to 256 GFLOPS, doubling the processing power previously available in RACE++ PCI systems Mercury unveils new RACE++ systems that can exceed 1.25 TeraFLOPS of processing power Mercury demonstrates new extensions to its industry-leading RACE++ systems that process high-resolution, 3-D medical diagnostic images up to 20 times faster than previously possible Mercury announces the first complete RACE++ multicomputer system implemented on a single board |
| 2001 | Mercury unveils the RACE++ Series VantageRT® 7410, the embedded industry's fastest PCI multicomputer for signal and image processing Mercury introduces the RACE++ Series AdapDev™ 1000 system, an affordable workstation that accelerates Mercury-based application development Mercury is first to offer conduction-cooled systems with switch fabric interconnect technology Mercury ships RACE++ PowerStream™ 510 systems, quadrupling system performance Mercury introduces RACE++ Series CompactPCI (cPCI) systems |
| 2000 | Mercury supercharges PCI product line with "G4" processors and RACE++ in its new RACE Series VantageRT 7400 system Mercury empowers application developers with the RACE++ Series MULTI® Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Mercury collaborates with Motorola in the development of RapidIO, an open-standard, high-performance, embedded switch fabric architecture Mercury unveils a new family of intelligent data communications interfaces, the RINOJ-F Series, based on the Front Panel Data Port (FPDP) standard |
| 1999 | Mercury quadruples processing density of image and signal processing systems with its RACE Series VME multicomputers based on next-generation PowerPC microprocessors with AltiVec technology Mercury brings performance debugging to 1000-processor systems with its Trace Analysis Tool and Library (TATL™) Mercury announces VSIPL-Lite, the industry's first commercial implementation of the Vector Image and Signal Processing Library (VSIPL) standard Mercury unveils the first system based on RACE++, the next-generation, industry standard RACEway Interconnect architecture |
| 1998 | Mercury announces RACE++, the next generation of its RACE switched-fabric architecture Mercury ships systems based on Motorola's 300-MHz PowerPC 750 microprocessors, nearly doubling the price/performance ratio of previous PowerPC-based RACE systems |
| 1997 | Mercury announces a 120-GFLOP system, the RACE Series MultiPort™, which supports more than 1,000 processors and provides 12+ GFLOPS per cubic foot of processing power Mercury ships MC/OS™ Version 4, the first heterogeneous runtime environment for multicomputing applications |
| 1996 | Mercury ships the industry's first computer system based on an open-standard, switch fabric "bus-less" interconnect Mercury achieves record performance with its SHARC DSP-based system, providing more than 5 GFLOPS of processing power on a single VME form factor module. |
| 1995 | RACEway Interlink attains approval as an ANSI standard (RACEway Interlink, ANSI/VITA 5-1994) Mercury introduces the RACE-MCH platform, the industry's first computer system based on an open-standard switched fabric "bus-less" interconnect |
| 1994 | Mercury achieves breakthrough computational density of 10 GFLOPS per cubic foot in an embedded system with 720 RISC processors Mercury unveils its heterogeneous product strategy incorporating PowerPC RISC microprocessor and SHARC DSP technology The VITA Standards Organization (VSO), an ANSI-accredited sanctioning body for VMEbus enhancements, approves RACEway Interlink as a VSO standard |
| 1993 | Mercury announces a new computer architecture - its RACE Series - that enables customers for the first time to embed true, scalable multicomputers inside their equipment. |
| 1992 | Mercury is the first real-time, embedded computer company to demonstrate more than 3 GFLOPS processing power in a standard VME chassis |
| 1991 | Mercury produces the first multifunction product to support VME64 Mercury announces the first embedded multicomputer to deliver GIGAFLOP performance |
| 1990 | Mercury announces its MC860 Series of attached processors that dramatically enhance the performance of compute-intensive applications |