SGI integrated solutions are transforming the Defense and Intelligence decision cycle by rapidly turning complex data into insight and effective action for military and civilian agencies.

Higher resolution satellites, multi-modal sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and other input sources are driving an explosion in data available for Defense and Intelligence decision-makers. The need has never been greater in both military and civilian agencies to turn this data into insight and effective action. However, the challenge of rapidly processing, visualizing and sharing these assets as they move through the decision cycle is daunting. SGI provides integrated Compute, Storage, and Visualization infrastructure that allows Defense and Intelligence professionals to meet these challenges and transform the velocity and effectiveness of the entire decision cycle.

"From ground stations charged with accelerating the production of visual assets, to command centres that must efficiently integrate visual data for teams to exploit, to training facilities striving to hone skills under the most realistic conditions, SGI provides the integrated infrastructure that accelerates decision cycles, delivering the right information to the right decision maker at the right time", stated Steve Detro, director, DoD Programmes, SGI Federal. "SGI's core competencies in the areas of high-bandwidth I/O and real-time high performance computing, industry-leading storage solutions, as well as its unrivalled leadership in high-end visualization, enable SGI to provide solutions in command and control, collaborative decision-making, mission preparation and immersive training that accelerate decisions, increase security and reduce cost."

At I/ITSEC 2004, SGI featured a Command Center system, an advanced display tool that empowers decision-makers with the ability to visually represent complex data. The Command Center effectively turns vast amounts of data into the knowledge required for making and communicating critical decisions with greater speed and confidence. The system includes a large centre display with advanced brightness, resolution and geometric accuracy needed to project key relationships within the data in either mono or stereo 3D. Additional information is displayed on the large LCD panels and monitors on both side wings. To further enhance decision-making and communication, SGI Visual Area Networking software can be added to give remote sites, near real-time, simultaneous access to the visuals represented on the Command Center.

At the compute station in SGI's booth, the company showcased the SGI Altix server product line driven by Intel Itanium 2 processors and the Linux operating system. The SGI Altix architecture handles large data sets with ease, enabling government customers to achieve groundbreaking improvements in homeland security, simulation-based acquisition, signals and geospatial intelligence, computational fluid dynamics, climate/weather/oceans modelling, and electro-magnetics and acoustics, among other applications.

With the explosion in the amount of data used in Defense and Intelligence applications, multiple users running multiple operating environments including Linux, IRIX, Solaris and Windows systems need access to this large data as it moves through various stages of the Decision Cycle. An SGI Storage Area Network (SAN) running the CXFS shared filesystem allows heterogeneous clients access to a single copy of the data, speeding work flow by avoiding time consuming data replication and movement. Implementing an SGI SAN solution also allows IT managers to reduce storage and administration cost while enhancing security by consolidating independent pods of storage into a single easily managed pool.

In the SGI booth, attendees saw real-world demonstrations how to accelerate work flow and reduce cost by implementing a SAN. The company showcased a Windows database development system user making changes to a simulation database and then immediately flying through the updated data using an IRIX OS-based system. The two machines, running different operating systems, use CXFS and the SGI SAN server for high performance access to a single copy of the data residing on an SGI InfiniteStorage TP9500 Fibre Channel disk array.

The visualization area of the SGI booth at I/ITSEC 2004 highlighted the new Silicon Graphics Prism, a breakout technology designed to provide superior training and decision support for professionals in the Defense and Intelligence community. Silicon Graphics Prism is the world's first truly scalable Linux visualization system. Based on SGI's global shared memory architecture, it provides seamless scaling for CPUs, GPUs, memory, I/O bandwidth and storage in a tightly integrated package. Using Intel Itanium 2 CPUs and ATI FireGL, Silicon Graphics Prism is the perfect blend of COTS technologies and industry-leading image generator capabilities. It satisfies the most demanding requirements while providing a lower life cycle cost than a PC-IG.

In addition to image generator demonstrations for fast jet, helicopter and ground training environments, the visualization area of SGI's booth demonstrated new capabilities for homeland security like emergency/contingency planning/training and border/perimeter security. Toolkits from the Open Source community and SGI's software development team were also on display.