White Paper

WHITE PAPER Tackling workloads in real time with PCIe Gen 4.0 mrcy.com 4 4 Moving to PCIe Gen 4.0 Faced with performance limitations, commercial computing is quickly implementing the PCIe Gen 4.0 specification ratified by the PCI-SIG in 2019 to double Gen 3.0 bandwidth speeds. Gen 4.0 processing chips, PC and server motherboards, storage devices and network adapters are all now available on the broad, non-defense marketplace with many other key peripherals set for release in the near future. Building current and future systems with PCIe Gen 3 limits flexibility due to a continuously decreasing pool of Gen 3.0-only options. Mercur y 's next gen RES XR7 rugged servers feature the latest PCIe 4.0 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, fast NVME storage, NVIDIA A100 GPUs, flexible I/O and 200 GbE networking to accelerate applications at the tactical edge. DEPLOYABLE GEN 4.0 FROM MERCURY The defense electronics industry adapts commercial technology to meet its needs, taking advantage of the continual performance increases driven by enormous market forces. As such, rugged server architectures closely resemble commercial servers, with PCIe occupying a central role in moving sensor data to archive storage, retrieving stored data for analysis, and moving data to and between specialized computing components. Mercury Systems is the longtime leader in rapidly bringing commercial computing technology to defense and edge environments; PCIe Gen 4.0 implementations are the latest example. Engineered to tackle demanding, compute-intensive workloads, Mercury 's next-gen rugged servers pack the latest PCIe 4.0 Intel processors and components in SWaP-optimized systems certified to operate in environmental extremes. Our partnership with Intel is critical to the effective design of these systems. The PCIe controller resides within the Intel silicon. Mercury uses rugged processing modules that expose as many PCIe lanes as possible, then ruggedizes the peripherals using these lanes. It is a synergistic relationship, with Intel providing successive generations of powerful processors and Mercury adapting those processors for deployment in defense applications. Mercury 's edge servers are also compliant with all relevant environmental standards, and supported by enhanced security features such as a data-at-rest protection. In multi-domain operations, an exploited edge processing subsystem could propagate vulnerabilities over a network, nullifying tactical advantages and compromising missions. Mercury 's secure rugged servers strengthen cybersecurity and mitigate these risks using features built into the Intel processor PCIE'S ROLE IN DEFENSE SYSTEMS PCIe is the computing industry 's most common interface standard for connecting high-speed components. In the commercial world, virtually every PC motherboard has multiple PCIe slots. PCIe is also an essential communication interface in the commercial servers that support data centers and cloud applications. In these servers, PCIe is the primary data path from CPUs to both storage devices and auxiliary processing components, such as GPUs. In currently deployed systems, PCIe Gen 3.0 is, by far, the most common version. Released in 2010, the Gen 3.0 specification was a high-bandwidth solution at that time. However, over the past decade, it has gradually become a system-performance bottleneck when compared with computing technology advancements. For example, a 16-lane Gen 3.0 connection can only handle 100 GB/sec, while current Ethernet network connections can effectively deliver a 200 GB/sec input data stream, creating a significant system limitation.

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