SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
Figure 2 Defense sensitive information resides not only in the algorithms themselves but also in the engineering knowledge of how those algorithms are implemented on an FPGA.
Finally, multi-die integration technology from multiple vendors has enabled the capability for mixed circuit technology in a single package. That reduces chip-to-chip latencies while reducing the physical security footprint of the overall solution. All that adds up to solutions with in-package memory, analogto-digital converters, and other solutions for applications like electronic warfare where processing time requirements and latency sensitivities are critical to performance.
gorithm that is implemented in the software of a commercial FPGA product. However, the breakthrough performance of these defense applications is highly dependent on the component technology and novel multidie commercial products, and sometimes on the design and optimization tools used and intellectual property blocks leveraged. That means the defense application itself, as well as its implementation on commercial technology both need protecting.
Example FPGA Breakthroughs
Defense Sensitive Technologies
One of the primary technologies enabled by high performance and high density FPGAs is classical beam forming and signal processing. Programmable logic is wellsuited for customizing digital beam steering and concentration capabilities. That serves the needs of high performance sensors and jammers, and more recently enables wireless communication infrastructures with the advent of the 5G standard. Another more recent breakthrough is the capability to perform artificial intelligence or machine learning applications on a single chip or small number of chips. Doing that requires either a massive tailored ASIC development or high density FPGA to conduct the wide parallelization of convolutional neural networks or other technology for use in targeting automation and image recognition. In any of those scenarios, the ‘defense application sensitive’ data is typically an al-
For years, many of the more sophisticated defense sensor and processing technologies have taken advantage of the raw computing power of workhorses like FPGAs, GPUs, embedded processors, and high speed memories. As these heterogeneous computing applications are moved into smaller form factors, multi-die chips, and more tightly coupled configurations the interest from the defense sector has only grown. The enabling technologies, in some instances, become the forces of ‘silicon convergence’ and highly capable systems-on-chip. As a consequence, defense sensitive information lies not only in the algorithms themselves but also in the engineering knowledge of how those algorithms are implemented across multiple electronic components (Figure 2). This ‘know how’ is a combined effort between defense developers and commercial chip vendors. Systems integration, and getting mulCOTS Journal | April 2017
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