COTS procurement gives the Navy a competitive edge at lower cost.

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 1996--

Mercury Computer Systems Receives Contract for

Multi-Purpose Processors in Submarine Combat Systems

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc., a leading supplier of embedded computers for the military, announced today that Digital Systems Resources, Inc. (DSR) placed its first order for RACE(R) multicomputers for deployment in the Multi-Purpose Processor (MPP) submarine combat systems for the U.S. Navy.

This announcement follows the $1.4 million contract DSR awarded to Mercury in August 1995 for the initial development of the MPP submarine combat systems. The first system under the new contract was delivered in September 1996.

"The contract with DSR emphasizes the new policy of using high-performance commercial technology in the military," said Jay Bertelli, President and CEO of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. "Our technology gives the Navy a full COTS and open-systems solution today with the ability to insert the very latest technology into the submarines of the future."

The MPP system requires the performance of a wide variety of computational tasks, high-speed communications, and scalability from small to large configurations. Comprised of 180 microprocessors and Mercury's RACEway Interlink technology, which is an ANSI/VITA standard, the system will be used to analyze streams of sonar data. A PCI mezzanine interface will be integrated into the RACE architecture to provide real-time sensor communication between sonar arrays and the RACE multicomputer.

"The Navy is taking advantage of the latest COTS technology in the MPP program," said James Smerchansky, MPP Program Manager at the Department of the Navy. "The Mercury systems allow us to insert technology upgrades as the program advances, giving the Navy the latest technology at a much lower overall cost."

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. is a technology company specializing in high-performance computing solutions for diagnostic medical imaging, commercial and defense image and signal processing, and servers for digital video editing. Mercury's RACE Series, with its heterogeneous multicomputing hardware and software architecture, allows customers to build the most cost-effective system for their application. -0-

Multi-Purpose Processor (MPP)

Background

-- The award marks the first significant step in integrating

commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology into deployed Fleet

Mission Critical anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and digital signal

processing (DSP) aboard a warship.

-- Mercury's RACE(R) systems will be used in support of the AN/BSY-1

undersea warfare combat system for the next generation attack

submarine.

-- MPP was developed by Digital Systems Resources, Inc. for the U.S.

Navy using COTS components to reduce costs and achieve the

required delivery schedule.

-- There will be two Mercury RACE COTS-based MPP units per vessel.

MPP System Description

-- Each Mercury-based MPP system contains a total of 48 processors,

providing 33 GFLOPS of processing power.

-- Each system contains:

-- 12 Mercury RACE MCV6s, each with 4 i860 processors and

16 Mbytes of memory

-- One RACEway Interlink (ILK8) to provide switched-data

transfers at 160 Mbytes/s

-- Wind River Systems' VxWorks real-time operating system 

-- One FORCE single-board computer host controller.

-- Mercury's Scientific Algorithm Library (SAL) is used extensively

to gain the data throughput speed necessary to provide real-time

sensor communication and data processing.

-- Mercury's MC/OS runtime environment is used for interprocessor

communications, data transfers over VME or RACEway to Mercury and

third-party boards, and control and communications of the signal

processing programs. -0-

Visit Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. on the WWW at http://www.mc.com

RACE is a registered trademark of Mercury Computer Systems Inc.

CONTACT: Leigh McLeod

Mercury Computer Systems Inc. 508-256-1300

or

Krystyna Stachowiak

Coltrin & Associates 212-221-1616