Most HPC systems are relegated to ground duty in the air-conditioned comfort of Earth-bound datacenters. But if the US Air Force has its way, at least one will be crunching numbers four miles above the Afghanistan countryside helping to supply US troops with warzone intelligence.
A story in Wired reports that the Air Force is developing a high-tech spy blimp — airship in military parlance — equipped with a supercomputer capable of processing data from video cameras and other surveillance hardware, and turning it into actionable intelligence for the troops on the ground. The goal is to crunch the sensor data in real-time and get the critical information to the field in less than 15 seconds.
The project, known as “Blue Devil,” is being developed in two phases, which will culminate in the deployment of a “freakishly large” airship seven times the size of a Goodyear Blimp. The ship is designed to stay aloft for up to a week at time. As for the on-board supercomputer:
With the equivalent of 2,000 single-core servers, it can process up to 300 terabytes per hour. So instead of just sending all the footage to the infantrymen, like most of today’s sensors, the airship’s processors will crunch the information, adding meta tags like location and time. Ground troops will query a server on the airship, which will only broadcast the stuff they’re interested in.
As one might imagine, the Air Force is not supplying the hardware and software specs that make up the system, except to mention that a Defense startup called Mav6 is performing the integration work.
Blue Devil is slated for its inaugural flight in October.