Enhancing Military Vehicle Autonomy through Decentralized Compute Architectures

Eletter Product

In the ever-evolving landscape of military technology, exponential growth in sensor resolutions in vehicles is generating vast datasets, necessitating a paradigm shift in vehicle system architectures. The solution lies in decentralized computing, an approach that ensures real-time processing in the face of these modern computing challenges.

There are several key elements of a decentralized framework. Firstly, there must be a sensor fusion node which can translate raw camera, lidar, and radar data into a usable format. This is done through FPGA capture cards which digitize incoming data and prepare it for transfer over a PCIe fabric. This preprocessing or conditioning of data saves computing cycles further down the chain, allowing the computing engines to remain dedicated to the inferencing of the data.

The next critical element is the distribution of the conditioned data. This is done by using an intelligent PCIe switch, which takes advantage of the extreme throughput and low latency intrinsic properties of PCIe. Multiple video concentrators can feed the conditioned data into the intelligent switch, which can then leverage the multicast feature of the internal switch chips to allow multiple endpoint compute stations to simultaneously access the data. This multicast workflow allows simultaneous real-time operation beyond what a typical unicast deployment is capable of. This intelligent switch can additionally serve as the root complex of the overall architecture and manage the traffic flow from concentrator to endpoints in an efficient manner.

Lastly, the compute endpoints can take advantage of the latest embedded GPGPU technologies to perform final inferencing and computing on the conditioned data. Through the hardware acceleration provided by GPGPUs operating on conditioned data, inference decisions can happen rapidly with no non-conforming data disruptions. OSS leverages this high-performance, low-latency compute architecture with the Cernis intelligent switch and Donati embedded compute products. The PCIe interconnection between the products meets the need of modern military vehicle computing.