Prodrive Technologies Selects Asis' MaXum 550 Chassis and TI DSPs for its Next-generation High Performance Computing (HPC) Platform

    TYSONS, VA, December 15, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Prodrive Technologies, a leading provider of high-end computing solutions, today announced that it has chosen Texas Instrument's KeyStone2 and KeyStone1 chipsets and Asis' MaXum 550 to be implemented later this year in an ambitious HPC project. As part of the project, Prodrive will develop a blade solution based on the ATCA open standard, which offers outstanding flexibility and scalability advantages. Thanks to Asis' innovative thermal design, the new MaXum 550 ATCA chassis is able to provide record-breaking cooling capacity of up to 700W per slot, which can hold as much as 144 High-End DSP cores and 24 Cortex-A15 cores per blade, and over 1700 DSP cores and 300 ARM cores per chassis. In addition, multiple chassis can be interconnected and used as a single super computer running thousands of cores.

The system constitutes the best solution for three critical metrics: performance per watt, performance per cubic volume, and performance per cost. According to industry experts, DSP processing is the next step, after GPPUs and GPUs, in terms of performance per Watt. With the KeyStone2, Texas Instruments has created a SoC that combines DSP processing with ARM processing, providing an energy efficient system infrastructure: an OS, I/O handling, running APIs, interoperability, etc.

The new Asis MaXum 550 ATCA chassis sets a new industry record in terms of cooling performance, bringing the advantages of the ATCA standard to HPC deployments. Yet, despite its extremely powerful cooling capacity, thanks to its innovative thermal design and advanced low power dynamic cooling technology, MaXum 550 is also extremely efficient in terms of its power consumption.

"While the new architecture lends itself perfectly for energy-efficient HPC, our next-generation HPC platform will prove to be a successful solution for additional applications, including image processing in industrial and medical markets, audio/video in Telecom, TICN, Radar in the military market, and more." Says Erik Smit, Prodrive Technologies' Sales Manager. "Every element in the solution sets a new record in performance and efficiency, from the blade level down to the cooling performance of the chassis."

Shai Benchmuel, Asis' Global Sales Director, said: "The new-generation high-performance processors have raised the bar in terms of their cooling requirements. While existing 14-slot ATCA systems offer cooling ranging between 300 watts to 600 watts, the new MaXum 550 is the first to accommodate up to 700 watts per slot. Yet, despite its extremely powerful cooling capacity, MaXum 550 is also extremely efficient in terms of its power consumption, thanks to its innovative thermal design and advanced low power dynamic cooling technology."

About Asis
Asis designs and manufactures complete enclosures for ATCA systems, mTCA, VPX, CompactPCI, and custom applications. Established in 1998, Asis is an executive member of the PICMG association for open standards of high performance telecommunications and industrial computing applications. The company has been serving the telecom, enterprise, defense, aerospace, and industrial markets, bringing innovations in high-speed interconnect and thermal modelling that exceed the standard in performance and reliability. Our service-oriented approach and our vast experience in the design and manufacturing of carrier-grade enclosures are translated into exceptional flexibility, providing tailored solutions for our client's specific needs. Asis is a member of the Trans Innovation Group, a leading provider of electronic components, cable assemblies, and electrical accessories. Our global presence includes sales offices in the US and a worldwide network of distributors and representatives.

About Prodrive Technologies
Prodrive delivers most competitive solutions in electronics design, manufacturing and added value services for OEM's and ODM's operating in industrial, medical, telecom, military, automotive and consumer markets. Our customers benefit from lower costs, higher flexibility, shorter time to market and sustained quality. We offer a complete range of solutions and services, take full responsibility and work closely together with our clients in long term relationships.

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