CPU TECH - News

CPU Tech Wins $100 Million System-on-a-chip Program

PLEASANTON, California – CPU Tech has won a development and production program with a potential value of nearly $100 million to modernize embedded computer systems. The win underscores the company's increasing importance in the embedded systems industry. Internet users, air travelers, medical patients and many others who rely on embedded computers will benefit from better, safer, more reliable systems thanks to CPU Tech's advanced system-on-a-chip technology that enables compatible solutions at an affordable cost.

"Our ability to compatibly scale high reliability systems represents the lowest risk path to the next generation of computing technology…beyond the microprocessor," said CPU Tech CEO, Ed King. "Validated Modernization™, one application of our technology, compatibly reduces the number of components in an existing system as much as 100:1. The result is that size, weight, and power use are reduced while performance, reliability and maintainability are improved. Risk is minimal because proven software is preserved unchanged."

In this new program, a "modernization kit" will be developed to renew a critical radar processing system on hundreds of F-16 fighter planes. The system contains 18 processors. The kit will reduce the number of components 80X, resulting in a reduction of the number of circuit boards from 43 to four. The weight of the system will be substantially reduced, and the Mean Time Between Failures dramatically increased.

The program is funded by the Commercial Operations and Support Savings Initiative, a joint program of the armed services and the Secretary of Defense. The program develops and tests methods for reducing military operations and support costs. In Stage I of the two-stage process, CPU Tech will develop the modernization kit. In Stage II, kits will be purchased by the F-16 Logistics Operations Division at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah and other customers.

According to Jon W. Shively, Chief of the F-16 Logistics Operations Division, "CPU Tech's project plan is state-of-the-practice. Their engineering procedures, technology and tools have been successfully employed in a number of aviation, space and commercial programs and represent best of class commercial practices."

CPU Tech provides scalable modules for high reliability embedded systems. Their technology, developed from an intensive ten-year R&D effort, is making it possible for the first time to build true scalability into high reliability systems from the outset and to modernize existing systems cost effectively.

Automation of the validation process is the key element in CPU Tech's capabilities. The Company has invested countless man-hours and millions of dollars to develop technology whereby they can provide very high assurance that a processor or a circuit board or an entire system is precisely compatible with another processor, board or system. Thorough testing of even a fairly simple system typically requires a billion or more bytes of test code. Other methods of producing that code would require thousands of programmer-years. CPU Tech's automated process saves tens of millions of dollars of engineering costs.

This technology makes it possible for CPU Tech to develop compatible embedded system solutions at a much lower cost and with far less risk than its competitors and to guarantee binary compatibility and life-cycle support for its products.

CPU Tech is headquartered in Pleasanton, California. Its customers are commercial and governmental organizations that manufacture or use high reliability embedded systems.