Military Embedded Systems Spring 2005 Volume 1 Number 1

Mil Tech Trends
MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS Resource Guide
FPGAs, serial fabrics, and UAVs:
The ones to watch
Q & A with Peter Cavill, CEO,
Radstone Embedded Computing
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
Radstone is one of the oldest companies serving the COTS market. Founded as a spin-off from Plessey Microsystems,
Radstone was in the COTS (Commercial Off-the-Shelf) market back when the Primes and Subs were still debating open standards
and Non-Developmental Items (NDI). An instigator of the original VME specification and the IEEE 1101.2 conductioncooled
specification, today Radstone is one of the big three vendors serving the harsh environment, deployed COTS market.
We tossed our questions up to Peter Cavill, president of Radstone Embedded Computing – a man who is so technically savvy
that he previously ran the company’s engineering group. – Ed.
MIL EMBEDDED: Tell us briefly about
your company’s focus as applied to the
military.
CAVILL: Radstone is 100 percent focused
on the military – providing solutions to
customers in the military marketplace
is what we do. At the heart of our business
is a commitment to developing long
term partnerships with defense OEMs to
provide them with the leading edge technology
they need in either rugged or nonrugged
environments. We believe we’re a
world leader in the field of designing and
developing rugged products, with a long
pedigree in bringing to market solutions
that have ruggedness designed in to them
from the drawing board stage.
Radstone was among the very first companies
to embrace COTS as the way forward,
with over 40 years of experience in
designing systems specifically for military
applications. We’re a key long-term
supplier to high-profile programs such as
the M1A2 Abrams tank, MLRS, ATFLIR,
Firefinder, the Eurofighter Typhoon and
the Mk48, and Mk54 torpedoes.
We’re also very well aware that 100 percent
standard products aren’t always what
the customer really needs, so our business
model is a highly flexible one that allows
us to react to specific program requirements
by developing custom versions of
our products.
MIL EMBEDDED: What are the top three
embedded technologies you’re seeing in
the market today?
CAVILL: Multiprocessor systems are
unquestionably one of the key embedded
technologies and are enabling our customers
to envisage applications that, only a
short while ago, were all but unthinkable.
Another technology that’s rightly capturing
a good deal of attention is switched Gigabit
Ethernet. There’s no doubt that communications
technologies are assuming much
greater importance in the defense programs
of today. Ethernet is a highly proven and
trustworthy technology.
The third technology I’d nominate would
be Software Defined Radio (SDR) and
radar. We’re seeing huge interest in this
area and the availability of increasingly
sophisticated silicon – notably Field
Programmable Grid Arrays (FPGAs) – is
making SDR a real growth area for our
business.
MIL EMBEDDED: How is the increasing
size, speed, and complexity of FPGAs
and other programmable devices changing
the nature of military systems?
CAVILL: With the emphasis on networkcentric
warfare, the military is looking to
acquire and process far more information,
of all types, than it has ever done before.
That leads to the need for incredibly powerful
data acquisition capabilities and no
less powerful signal processing systems.
For us, that’s where FPGA fits in as an
enabling technology for this new generation
of solutions. In data acquisition, for
example, the closer you can put processing
power to the capture point, at the front
end of the application straight off the sensor
– the antenna, for example – the more
data you can capture.
Powerful FPGAs, in conjunction with
powerful converters, enable you to do
that and, of course, because the algorithm
is executed in hardware rather than
software, you can get incredible performance.
Similarly at the back end of the
application FPGAs can deliver enormous
amounts of processing power. The SDR
systems that ICS [a Radstone subsidiary]
develops use FPGAs for precisely these
reasons.
MIL EMBEDDED: There’s been a great
deal of industry consolidation over
the past several years, both within the
Primes/Subs, and within the embedded
vendor base. What effects will this have
on the military customer?
CAVILL: The consolidation in the industry
is a mixture of good news and bad news
for military customers. The bad news is
that consolidation inevitably results in a
reduction in the number of potential suppliers,
and thus a reduction in competition
– and that can never be good for any
customer looking to maximize his leverage
and his spending power. On the other
hand, consolidation into fewer, larger
suppliers is likely to reduce volatility in
the supplier base – although there may be
short term pain as product lines are rationalized.
Larger companies tend to be in
business for longer than small ones, and
that reassurance has always been valued
by military customers.
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