Product References

TECH BRIEF w w w. t m s . m r c y. c o m Deployability and life-cycle management of large and disparate collections of weapons, combat and C4ISR computing systems is one of the most critical challenges facing the Department of Defense (DoD) today. Numerous defense programs, each defining separate, and oftentimes unique system architectures, configurations, and compositions, result in a wide range of processing and control systems that create complexity and drive excessive lifecycle costs. Although serious efforts have been made to standardize on a set of common hardware solutions such as NAVSEA Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion (A-RCI); Common Processing (CPS) and Common Display Systems (CDS), that limited commonality has not extended across any one ship, let alone an entire fleet. This lack of a truly common modular infrastructure has led to: • Difficult, asynchronous technology insertion cycles and delayed modernization due to expensive, time-consuming integration and shipboard industrial work; • 2DMS/MS-driven logistics that lead to the purchase of inefficient, obsolete, end-of-life products; • Non-uniform system administration and management creating unnecessary complexity; • Failure to achieve broad-based economies of scale due to small quantity purchases and a variety of "spares." Beyond VMEbus Bringing commercial concepts to the military market ACQUIRE ACQUIRE ACQUIRE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE ACQUIRE ACQUIRE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE PROCESS PROCESS STORAGE STORAGE EXPLOIT EXPLOIT DISSEMINATE ACQUIRE ACQUIRE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE PROCESS PROCESS STORAGE STORAGE EXPLOIT ACQUIRE ACQUIRE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE PROCESS PROCESS ACQUIRE ACQUIRE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE 100101010 001101011 110101100 DIGITIZE PROCESS PROCESS STORAGE STORAGE Mercury Systems is a leading commercial provider of secure sensor and safety-critical processing subsystems. Optimized for customer and mission success, Mercury's solutions power a wide variety of critical defense and intelligence programs. These challenges not only make it difficult to upgrade to the latest technology, but may also limit the government's ability to repurpose used – but still viable – equipment that may have residual value to other programs with less funding. If the DoD is to get on, and stay on the commercial technology cam, current efforts to standardize common hardware platforms must be accelerated. What is needed is a standardized, Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) compliant architecture that is at once scalable, extensible, serviceable and available. Once deployed, it should be populated with a relatively small set of mechanically robust Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS), loosely- coupled, hardware modules compatible with mission critical land, sea, and airborne applications—truly COTS products with the end in mind. The Impact of VMEbus To understand the importance of standards-based technology in the DoD market, one of the best known examples is VMEbus. In the 1980's and 90's VMEbus overcame numerous competitors to become arguably the leading embedded bus-board architecture for a wide range of commercial, industrial, military and aerospace applications. Over the years, it became the "party candle" of bus structures—whenever a competitor arose adopting some form of the Eurocard packaging, whether it be Multibus II, CompactPCI, Futurebus, ATCA, etc., the VME community would morph their product just enough to not only keep it alive but also maintain its dominance as the embedded computing architecture of choice. The compact (6U x 160mm deep) form-factor, flexible packaging, pin-and-socket connector, and robust commercial/ industrial construction enabled it to soldier on as an embedded computing platform for much longer than anyone could have originally predicted—often using the backplane primarily as a physical structure with power and ground distribution.

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