By Mike Knowles, President and CEO
Watching the conflicts play out recently in the Ukraine and Iran, it is certain that there has been not only massive adoption in implementation of AI, sensor processing, sensor fusion, and autonomy but also massive advancement of those technologies in relatively short time periods compared to any other time in history. The leaders on the battlefield are those that have harnessed and deployed these technologies without delay in alignment to standards, timing, or bureaucracy in acquiring. Because the level and pace of technology today is so steep, those who fail to adopt and move with a sense of urgency run the risk of falling behind in a technology battle from which they may never have the time or ability to catch up.
At the heart of the matter is the core computing architecture that is needed on edge platforms to deliver the high performance compute and extremely low latency required to drive platform AI, sensor, autonomy, and/or weapon systems. For over a decade, the prevailing compute architecture in military weapon systems has been the Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA). This architecture was nominally created to provide open systems standards, driving a solution space where anyone’s hardware could work with anyone’s software. Though a number of those objectives have been met, unfortunately the architecture did not contemplate the massive demand for, or quick onset of, AI, sensor fusion, and autonomy. It has failed to provide the high performance compute, low latency, and reduced SWaP-C required to leverage AI, sensor fusion, and autonomy for an unfair advantage on the battlefield, thus relegating it to the Massively Outdated Slow Architecture.
In the meantime, the commercial market—especially around datacenter compute, AI application, and autonomy—has spent billions to achieve superior compute and latency performance which can be leveraged in scale from advantaged SWaP-C platform solutions to high-end AI LLM and inference applications. To its credit, it has accomplished this while also maintaining the benefits sought by MOSA in implementation of an open systems architecture through the employment of OCP (Open Compute Project) and PCIe.
Over a year ago, the testament to the distinct contrast between MOSA and OCP was recently played out center stage when the Department of State banned the sale of commercial compute, datacenter technologies, and products such as GPUs to China, Russia, and their proxies. They had acquired intelligence that these adversaries were using these technologies to accelerate deployment of AI, sensor fusion, and autonomy to their armed forces, establishing a growing unfair advantage against the US and its Allies who remained on embedded MOSA-based architectures. The ban and subsequent intelligence reporting were meant to spur a revolution in US technologies to transform from the outdated and inadequate MOSA based solutions to adopt and implement high performance compute (HPC) and low latency products and solutions from the commercial market space to flip the unfair advantage on the battlefield to the US and Allied forces.
What exactly does this revolution in architecture capabilities look like? One Stop Systems (OSS), a designer and manufacturer of ruggedized, high-performance computing solutions, has fielded multiple solutions to the DoW in the past year, delivering material increases in compute at orders of magnitude lower latency, all within less SWaP-C than legacy players in the market are delivering in MOSA-based architected solutions. In a number of cases, OSS delivered these solutions in less than a year against multi-year efforts by legacy companies. We achieved this by using a wide range of GPU and FPGA compute solutions linked on PCIe-backed fabrics to full ML-STD ruggedization within smaller SWaP-C envelopes. All within open systems standards that are non-proprietary.
An example provides insight into the magnitude of this advantage. Figure 1 below provides a comparison of key compute, latency, and SWaP-C parameters of a traditional MOSA solution compared to an OSS OCP-based solution for an airborne AI sensor processing solution utilizing 2 AI engines.
Figure 1. (Above) Comparison Between MOSA and OSS OCP
With these advantages, it is no surprise the Department of State had to ban the sale of supporting technologies to Russia and China. Congressional leaders are modifying NDAA language to promote commercial HPC solutions, and service leads are creating avenues to adopt the architecture revolution. However, there must be a heightened sense of urgency to accelerate this movement and capture the capabilities being developed by the tens of billions of dollars in R&D in the commercial compute arena every year. These are not Power Point or White Paper concepts; these are products, architectures and solutions that exist today and can field extreme advantage in months, not years. MOSA must adapt and evolve or make way for new open system architectures that can usher in an unfair advantage on the battlefield with a sense of urgency for the US and its Allies.
Before starting college in 2022, I had considered artificial intelligence (AI) a thing of the future, something I wouldn’t see until I was later in my years. With the birth of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and the rise of machine learning systems, my world flipped on its head. Since joining the tech industry, I see I am not alone with this experience. From one year to the next, there is no telling what kind of technological developments we will bear witness to. When it comes to the defense and security of our nation, capitalizing on these advancements is paramount, lest we fall behind our adversaries. As a result, within the defense industry, marketers are required to become adaptable to the shifting needs of their company’s customers.
My time at the booth was spent listening to my colleagues interacting with partners and potential customers. Watching these exchanges, I recognized what was at the heart of West—the real reason why hundreds of people had shown up during the work week to surround themselves with others in the defense industry. The obvious explanations come to mind: to meet customers, establish connections, solidify a brand’s image, and feel out competitors. But when I took a step back to study the messaging on the booths and walk the floor, I saw what I had studied for years as a marketing student come to life. Every conversation and display was geared toward answering one two-part question:
“What do my customers want, and how can my product(s) solve their problem?”
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