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.
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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,”
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“estimate,” “project,” “intend,” and similar expressions. These
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cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or
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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
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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 / rmcgrail@mc.com
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.