February6, 2007:
The U.S. Navy has changed the design of its sonar data processing
systems to enable newer, faster, processors to be installed on a regular
basis. This is in recognition of two things. One, that computer
processing power continues to double every two years, as it has pretty
consistently since the 1960s. Two, military equipment takes over a decade to
develop and deploy, and upgrades don't come a whole lot faster. PC users may
not notice this constant growth in computing power, because as their processors
(the brains of the computer) get faster, software eats up a lot of that
additional power with stuff like graphics and running many different programs
at once (many of them users are not even aware of). Thus while PC processors
have increased their speed and capability a thousand times in the last twenty
years, your word processor, email or spreadsheet doesn't run any faster. But
for sonar users, there is an enormous need for more speed. That's because the
sounds that the sonar hears under water can reveal a lot more if there's more
powerful computers at work analyzing it. So, over the last decade, the navy has
replaced a lot of the custom built computers (some using 1980s vintage CPUs)
with current Intel CPUs, and largely commercial software to run them. While it
might make many geeks nervous to know that Windows computers are being used on
American nuclear submarines, the software in question has proven very robust
and reliable. Plus, the navy does not always have the very latest CPUs and
software. Veteran computer users know that, of wait six months to a year after
something new comes out, it's a lot safer to use.
In
some respects, the navy was forced into this COTS (Commercial, Off The Shelf)
direction. Russia and China, playing catch up, have gone COTS, big time,
because it was the cheapest and fastest way to make progress. China, in
particular, has made extensive use of personal computer grade technology in its
military technology.