DARPA looks for new ways to power computing in recon, surveillance systems

The agency responsible for developing new technology for the Department of Defense is looking to the public for new ideas on how to power computers that control reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence operations.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) said computer power limitations, said are beginning to cramp computational capabilities that enable military systems. It said computational capabilities are increasingly limited by power requirements and constraints on heat dissipation.

It’s looking for ideas from the public in a workshop planned for Feb. 15 in Arlington, VA.

It said one particular military computational need is in intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance systems where sensors collect more information than can be processed in real time.  To continue to increase processing speed, new methods for controlling power constraints are required, it said.

In the past, computing systems could rely on increasing computing performance with each processor generation, it said, but following Moore’s Law, each generation brought with it double the number of transistors.  In the past, it said, clock speeds could increase 40 percent each generation without increasing power density, allowing increased performance without the penalty of increased power.

 “That expected increase in processing performance is at an end,” said DARPA Director Regina Dugan.  “Clock speeds are being limited by power constraints. Power efficiency has become the Achilles Heel of increased computational capability.”

DARPA’s Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) program looks to improve power efficiency for embedded computer systems, providing more computing per watt of electrical power.

As transistor operating voltages approach their current limits, device operating characteristics change dramatically, decreasing reliability and maximum operating frequency, said DARPA.  Since reliability and operating frequency are critical to its user base, commercial industry has only limited ability to reduce operating voltage to avoid these clock frequency decreases. DARPA said PERFECT is looking for revolutionary approaches to processing-power efficiency to overcome these limitations,  including near-threshold voltage operation and massive heterogeneous processing concurrency, combined with techniques to effectively use the resulting concurrency and tolerate the resulting increased rate of soft errors.