Dear The Damani,
Rakesh Damani (damani31@gmail.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.
The sender also included the following message for you:
This is an article indicating how technology works well in in civilian and military worls
(Note: the sender's e-mail address above has not been verified.)
Subscribe to The Economist print edition, get great savings and FREE full access to Economist.com. Click here to subscribe: http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/email
Alternatively subscribe to online only version by clicking on the link below and save 25%:
http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT
WAR GAMES
Dec 10th 2009
Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the
performance and reducing the price of military equipment
VIDEO games have become increasingly realistic, especially those
involving armed combat. America's armed forces have even used video
games as recruitment and training tools. But the desire to play games
is not the reason why the United States Air Force recently issued a
procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game
consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will
run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for
research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems
for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional
supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from
a cluster of 336 PS3s.
This is merely the latest example of an unusual trend. There is a long
tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to
consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide
missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have
moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly
moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are
appropriated for military use.
Traditionally the military has preferred to develop and control its own
technology, not just for tactical advantage but also to ensure that
equipment was tough and reliable enough for those whose lives would
depend on it. That began to change after the cold war as defence
budgets became constrained and the development of sophisticated
industrial and consumer products accelerated. As some of these
technologies have become commoditised products which are available to
everyone--friend and foe alike--there seems less reason not to buy them
and use the savings for more critical equipment that needs to be
built-to-order. And consumer products can often be tweaked to make them
more rugged or secure when necessary.
HANDS OFF THE XBOX
A new piece of military kit can take years to specify, test and acquire
using a traditional procurement process, only to arrive already
outdated. So, where possible, it is quicker and cheaper to buy
commercial off-the-shelf items. These range from industry-standard
components, like processor chips incorporated into military equipment,
to products that consumers would recognise. Sometimes these are made
more rugged, like Panasonic Toughbook computers, or converted for other
uses, like Xbox 360 video-game controllers adapted to operate small
robotic ground vehicles used for reconnaissance.
Apple's iPod and iPhone are among the latest additions to a soldier's
kit. American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are using them for
translation (one such device is pictured above) and to view
intelligence information, such as pictures transmitted from unmanned
reconnaissance drones. An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables
snipers to calculate range and trajectory for their shots, and built-in
satellite-positioning allows local weather conditions to be taken into
account. The basic version costs $3.99 and the full military one--which
even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the rotation of the Earth
will influence a bullet's flight--costs $29.99.
In the fast-moving consumer-electronics industry, where some products
are lucky to have a shelf life of more than a year, companies can
spread their research-and-development costs across a global mass
market. Defence contractors, however, usually supply only a limited
amount of equipment designed to meet the specific requirements of a
particular customer. Exports can help spread costs, but different
countries demand different specifications, which pushes costs back up.
Consumer-electronics companies also adopt aggressive pricing strategies
to grab market share. The PS3, which now costs $300 in America, was
initially sold at a loss by Sony in order to boost its popularity. (The
company hopes to recoup its losses by taking a cut from the sale of
each game for the console.)
In many cases it is probably now impossible for companies outside the
consumer-electronics industry to match the price and performance of
mass-market components. BAE Systems, a British aerospace and defence
contractor, has calculated that a GBP300 ($500) video card from NVIDiA,
a Californian company which is a leader in gaming graphics, can replace
GBP30,000 worth of other computing equipment used for engineering
simulation.
What has changed in the past two years, says David Standingford, group
leader of electromagnetic modelling at BAE, is that products such as
the PS3 and NVIDiA graphics cards have become immensely powerful
computers in their own right. He adds that the emergence of new
industry standards and a leap in power from the use of multi-core
processors, which contain several number-crunching engines working in
parallel, has made it easier to incorporate and link up such devices to
tackle much bigger tasks.
Last year an IBM supercomputer called Roadrunner, based at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, established a new record by
operating at more than one petaflop (1,000 trillion calculations a
second). Roadrunner is the world's first "hybrid" supercomputer, having
been assembled in part from off-the-shelf equipment, including 12,960
Cell processor chips like those found inside the PS3. It will be used
to simulate the behaviour of nuclear weapons.
In Britain, BAE Systems, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Williams (a Formula 1
racing team) and others have set up a not-for-profit laboratory based
in Bristol called CFMS to evaluate consumer products and components
that could reduce the cost of engineering simulations. Jamil Appa of
BAE, who is involved in the project, says one aim is to see how easily
the internal architecture of video-games consoles can handle the
complex algorithms used in simulations. The lab will provide feedback
to consumer-product suppliers, he adds.
NVIDIA already recognises that it is not just gamers who are interested
in its products. In September, when Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA's CEO,
unveiled the company's latest graphics technology, he described it as
the "soul of a supercomputer" with applications beyond gaming.
Nor is it just the military that is keen to employ consumer technology
in sophisticated applications. The Swedish police are already using a
virtual autopsy system based on gaming technology to help solve crimes
(see box). And Siemens, a German electronics and engineering giant,
recently launched an ultrasound scanner which allows expectant mothers
to see their unborn child in 3-D. It uses an NVIDIA graphics card and
3-D glasses devised for gaming. Soldiers have also been spotted wearing
3-D glasses, which will add another dimension to modern warfare.
See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15063872
Go to http://www.economist.com for more global news, views and analysis from the Economist Group.
- ABOUT ECONOMIST.COM -
Economist.com is the online version of The Economist newspaper, an independent weekly international news and business publication offering clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, finance, science & technology, culture, society and the arts.
Economist.com also offers exclusive content online, including additional articles throughout the week.
- SUBSCRIBE NOW AND SAVE 25% -
Click here: http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT
Subscribe now with 25% off and receive full access to:
* all the articles published in The Economist newspaper
* the online archive - allowing you to search and retrieve over 33,000 articles published in The Economist since 1997
* The World in - The Economist's outlook on the year
* Business encyclopedia - allows you to find a definition and explanation for any business term
- ABOUT THIS E-MAIL -
This e-mail was sent to you by the person at the e-mail address listed
above through a link found on Economist.com. We will not send you any
future messages as a result of your being the recipient of this e-mail.
- COPYRIGHT -
This e-mail message and Economist articles linked from it are copyright
(c) 2009 The Economist Newspaper Group Limited. All rights reserved.
http://www.economist.com/help/copy_general.cfm
Economist.com privacy policy: http://www.economist.com/about/privacy.cfm
The Economist, Economist.com and CFO Europe are trading names of:
The Economist Newspaper Limited
Registered in England and Wales. No.236383
VAT no: GB 340 436 876
Registered office: 25 St James's Street, London, SW1A 1HG
No comments:
Post a Comment