Model 8258 accelerates Versal AI deployment for military intelligence
The ability to rapidly deploy Versal AI Core technology using the Model 8258 development platform, gives soldiers the ability to react quickly and make real-time tactical decisions, said Mercury Systems.
The development platform is based on a dual AMD-Xilinx Versal AI Core. It incorporates Mercury’s SCFE6931 signal processing module.
“There is a growing need for artificial intelligence capabilities in autonomous unmanned vehicles/aircraft and munitions,” explained Ken Hermanny, senior director and general manager, Mercury Mixed Signal.
“The heterogeneous mix of computing resources inherent to the Versal AI Core series gives designers the freedom to assign computing tasks to the most suitable processing engine, as well as being able to adapt and reassign resources dynamically, as needed,” added Manuel Uhm, director of silicon marketing at AMD. Mercury’s Model 8258 adds to the Versal ecosystem “by harnessing the resources of two powerful AMD-Xilinx VC1902 adaptive SoCs and simplifying development in a preconfigured platform,” he said.
The 8258 supports application development on the SCFE6931 hardware, rather than a lab-only evaluation board, so the IP, software and hardware can transition directly to deployed signals intelligence and electronics intelligence systems, where data can be quickly analysed and identified.
Target applications are developing artificial intelligence applications such as target classification, signal decoding/decryption, image recognition and pattern recognition. In a Navigator FPGA development kit it allows users to develop custom FPGA IP to add application-specific features. The Navigator board support package (BSP) includes software functions and libraries to program the board and control the Navigator IP. Ready-to-run examples are included. There is also optional support for four optical 100 GigE interfaces for fast, parallel processing and data throughput.
Two Versal VC1902 processors on the 6U board doubles the heterogeneous processing resources available, added Mercury.
Mercury Systems creates and delivers technology purpose-built to meet customers’ needs. Customers are in the global aerospace and defence industry. From data to decision, silicon to systems, aerospace and defence companies use Mercury products, services, technologies.
