Embedded software exploits 4th Generation Intel Core i7 instructions
AXISLib-AVX release 2 adds support for the newly-available fused multiply add (FMA), bit manipulation and 256-bit wide integer instructions. It also supports multi-threaded operation to extract maximum performance from Intel’s hyper-threaded multi-core platform. Together, these new capabilities can make a significant contribution to higher performance in multi-threaded, multi-core signal processing ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) applications.
This enables users of GE’s recently-announced SBC326 rugged OpenVPX single board computer, as well as GE’s entire family of soon-to-be-announced platforms based on the 4th generation Intel Core i7 ‘Haswell’ processor, to take maximum advantage of the performance it offers while reducing development time, cost and risk.
Release 2, with the full Core 1.0+ VSIPL API, extends support beyond Intel’s AVX1.0 256-bit floating point unit introduced on 2nd and 3rd generation Core processors, allowing maximum benefit to be obtained from the AVX2.0 technology available with Intel 4th generation Core i7 Windows, Linux and VxWorks operating system platforms.
“The new instructions available with Intel’s ‘Haswell’ processors, along with the improved micro-architecture, have the potential to significantly accelerate commonly used computational functions found in many applications such as radar, sonar, signal and image processing,” said Rod Rice, General Manager, Military & Aerospace Products at GE Intelligent Platforms. “AXISLib-AVX release 2 brings a powerful, sophisticated yet easy-to-use software development environment that allows prime contractors, OEMs and system integrators to take advantage of those new levels of performance, and to bring SWaP-sensitive deployable embedded solutions to market more quickly and at lower cost.”
AXIS – Advanced Multiprocessor Integrated Software – is a set of software modules that can be used to accelerate the design, development, testing and deployment of complex DSP and multiprocessing platforms for real-time applications such as radar, sonar, communications and image processing. AXIS development tools allow engineers to focus on application functionality by taking away a large portion of the software development burden.
AXISLIB-AVX release 2 provides a suite of more than 600 performance-optimised digital signal processing (DSP) and math function librariesfor Linux, Windows and the Wind River VxWorks real-time operating system platform.
AXISLib DSP and math libraries can be used on their own, or within the AXIS framework that includes AXISFlow interprocessor communication (IPC) middleware and the AXISView integrated graphical user interface (GUI). These tools enable fast prototyping and application scaling across multiple processor cores, processor nodes, boards and data or control plane fabrics including Ethernet, InfiniBand and PCI Express.
GE Intelligent Platforms; www.ge.com