General Micro Systems Wins Three ‘Best of Show’ Awards at AUSA

Four-star winners in Embedded Computing and Rugged Computing categories are built on GMS’ innovative new X9 Spider distributed computing architecture (DCA)

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AUSA 2023 – Three new General Micro Systems (GMS) innovations won Best of Show from Military Embedded Systems magazine at the Association for the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition in Washington, D.C. this week. The X9 Spider Intelligent Switch earned four-star designation in the Embedded Computing category and the X9 Spider Rugged Thunderbolt™ Display, and the X9 Manpack, GMS’ portable mission computer, earned four-star designation in the Rugged Computing category.

All three products are built on the X9 Spider family of rugged, open distributed computing architecture (DCA) small form factor systems, designed to reduce the development barriers to rugged high-performance computing, high-definition video, sensor processing, artificial intelligence (AI), battlefield edge processing, storage, display and intelligent I/O.

“When we introduced our X9 Spider distributing computing architecture at AUSA last year, we knew we had a winning and innovative concept – and these awards, coupled with strong customer interest, validates it,” said Ben Sharfi, CEO and chief architect, GMS. “Working together or separately, on the body, in the air, on ships or the ground, the X9 Manpack, the X9 Spider Intelligent Switch and the X9 Spider Rugged Thunderbolt Display provide the compute power, I/O and distributed architecture connectivity to support the demanding needs of next-generation warfare in the smallest, lightest palm-sized devices that can fit anywhere.”

The award-winning products include:

• X9 Spider Manpack: Running off a standard soldier battery, the most powerful full-featured wearable mobile computer is intended for dismounted soldiers and Marines who need on-the-move, high-performance processing, communications, video, database access and AI. Designed from the ground up to offer the most compute power and I/O in the smallest, lightest weight battery-powered package, X9 Spider Manpack can drive up to four on-body displays such as the X9 Rugged Thunderbolt Display; connect to wireless LANs and personal area networks (PANs); uplink to mounted assets like vehicles or command posts; store up to 20TB of onboard data, and connect to high-rate body sensors while processing on-board AI algorithms such as image/facial recognition, target tracking or sensor fusion. See more details here.

• X9 Spider Rugged Thunderbolt Display
  Offered in 12-inch, 17-inch, 24- or 36-inch sizes in both aluminum and carbon fiber, the handheld display provide meaningful solider information from moving maps, call-for-fire menus, sensor constellation, EW / SIGINT readouts, and even face-to-face (F2F) video conferencing. The display uses Thunderbolt 4 technology developed by Apple^® and Intel to connect by exceptionally thin single copper or fiber optic cable up to 50m to any X9 host computer, including the Manpack. It gets data and power over Thunderbolt—including over GMS LightBolt fiber optic cable—and can act as a multi-function peripheral of the Manpack by adding radios, GPS, APNT, removable drive, voice activation and audio, and even high brightness and NVIS stealth. The display can be daisy-chained to expand to multiple independent displays, while acting as a plug-in peripheral appliance for the main host computer by adding COTS M.2 add-in I/O like software-defined radio (SDR) or GPS, or a removable SSD storage drive. For more information, read here.

• X9 Spider Intelligent Switch
  The X9 Spider Intelligent Switch is an accelerated networking module designed to improve the performance of Ethernet-based military applications without compromising size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements. This fully sealed, rugged, fanless and battlefield-ready switch—with eight 10 GBase-TX Ethernet ports and four 100 Gb Ethernet ports—provides acquisition and modernization programs with industry-leading bandwidth and efficiency in a palm-sized module, built to carry applications forward for decades to come. For details, see the datasheet here.

About General Micro Systems:
Over 45 years, General Micro Systems (GMS) has built a reputation as the industry expert in highest-density, modular, compute-intensive, and rugged small form-factor embedded computing systems, servers and switches. These powerful systems, all built in America, are ideal for demanding C5ISR defense, aerospace, medical, industrial, and energy exploration applications. GMS is an IEC, ISO, AS9100, NIST-800-171, and MIL-SPEC supplier with infrastructure and operations for long-life, spec-controlled, and configuration-managed programs. For more information, visit www.gms4sbc.com.

A high-resolution image can be found here.