Wearable supercomputer could provide training on the go

Who says you can't take it with you? A small Indiana company, MNB Technologies Inc., claims it can stuff the power of a supercomputer that supports a range of military and civil applications into a wearable 1-pound box.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a public-private partnership providing financial backing for Bloomington-based MNB, said on Monday that the company "is on the verge of a technology breakthrough that could put the power of a supercomputer on the belt of America's military."

Nick Granny, MNB's chief executive officer, said the mini-supercomputer is based on a 5.6-inch wide, 3.3-inch high, 1-inch deep unit from San Francisco-based manufacturer OQO. The company shrunk the features of a Windows desktop PC into an ultra-mobile system.

MNB boosted the power of the mini-supercomputer by wiring to the chassis a flash memory device that can process between 8 and 10 gigaflops. One gigaflops equals 1 billion floating operations per second. An average PC processor operates between 1 and 2 gigaflops, or about one-eighth to one-quarter of the processing power of the MNB computer.

While it seems like an extraordinary amount of power for such a small system, Granny said advances in technology have allowed designers to fit the functionality of mammoth machines onto chips.

MNB can increase the power of its 1-pound computer by linking it to similar size devices, each operating at 15 gigaflops, that communicate with the main system over a wireless connection, Granny said.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped MNB to develop a version of its wearable supercomputer for a portable modeling, simulation and training system, dubbed Simulation Center in a Box, for the Army under a subcontract with Cole Engineering Services Inc. of Orlando, Fla.

The Army operates garrison-based simulation centers that require troops to rotate in from the field for training.The Simulation Center in a Box would allow battalions to conduct simulated exercises in the field, said John Stevens, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Cole.

MNB's wearable mini-supercomputer could support other computationally heavy military requirements such as integrating map and imagery data in the field, Granny said, as well as merging graphics and imagery in the cockpits of military or civilian aircraft.

The system also could support truck fleets and drivers trying to determine best routes, a complex task known as the traveling salesman problem, he added, or even fit in the cabs of tractors used by Indiana farmers to support "smart farming" operations.