CORPORATE EFFORTS
DARPA is
among several military and commercial
research groups pursuing computers
capable of petaFLOPS (thousand-trillion
floating-point operations per second)
processing capabilities, with the thought
that cryogenic superconducting electronics
may ultimately provide the solution.
IBM’s Blue Gene/L computer has
reached 280 TFLOPS using multiple
CPUs. But, PFLOPS capability may be
beyond the realm of room-temperature
electronics using Josephson junctions
maintained at cryogenic temperatures.
Superconducting quantum interference
devices (SQUIDs), which are essentially
two Josephson junctions in parallel, are
so sensitive to changes in magnetic fields
that they’re used on board U.S. Navy
submarines for mine detection.
The U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronics
Research, Development, and
Engineering Center (CERDEC) contracted
with superconductor company Hypres
last year to come up with an analog-todigital
converter (ADC) capable of directly
digitizing signals through 20 GHz with
1-GHz bandwidth.
CERDEC also funded the company to
develop a hybrid technology digital
receiver for satellite communications
(satcom) systems using low-noise superconducting
electronics to cut system
noise figure and improve satcom link
margins. Hypres’ technology is based on
the use of niobium chips, which are
maintained at 4 K (â??452°F).
Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force contracted
with another player in the superconductor
arena, Superconductor Technologies,
to develop tunable,
reconfigurable filters based on superconduction
for use in sensitive RF receivers.
Finally, even test equipment must meet
some rigorous requirements. A current
trend in military measurement technology
is to adopt modular “synthetic instruments”
(SIs). They resemble softwaredefined
radios (SDRs) in that software
defines the functions of the hardware.
Rather than specify a measurement system
using a specific signal generator,
spectrum analyzer, or a power meter, an
SI system would employ a direct-digital
synthesizer (DDS) or other form of arbitrary
waveform generator as the signal
source. It also uses a frequency upconverter
to achieve the required frequency
coverage and a high-speed digitizer that
could be controlled with software to provide
a required set of measurements.
Aeroflex’s Synthetic Multifunction
Adaptable Reconfigurable Test Environment
(SMART^E) is an SI test system
based on reconfigurable hardware and
software (Fig. 2). The SMART^E 5000
system employs a proprietary synthetic
chassis and COTS modules based on
LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation
(LXI) technology. LXI can support a
number of measurement interfaces, like
LAN, PXI, Compact PCI, and GPIB.
Based on an open architecture with
industry-standard software and hardware,
the test system can adapt to applications
in electronic warfare, radar, communications,
and navigation. Configurations
are available to 40 GHz.