NVIDIA GPUs and Supermicro UK Servers Fuel Aveillant's Holographic Radar

Online, January 13, 2014 (Newswire.com) - UK technology company, Aveillant, has successfully completed its two week live demonstrations at Glasgow Prestwick Airport which show that its Holographic Radar reliably removes wind turbines from airport radars with no degradation to radar performance, paving the way for wind farms to be safely built near airports.

Having been in development for two years, the Holographic Radar builds 3D trajectories of moving objects in its field of view and can intelligently differentiate between various types of objects such as aircrafts or wind turbines. Subsequently, it can reliably detect aircrafts and feed their positioning back to the Air Traffic Control system in real-time, allowing controllers to have a consistent and accurate view of the aircraft at all times when passing over a wind farm, maintaining the safety of pilots and the public.

Wind farms interfere with traditional aviation radars by creating scintillating clouds of clutter on the air traffic controller's view. To the traditional radar, each turbine blade looks like the wing of an aircraft which appears and disappears as the turbine rotates. This means that for existing wind farms, air traffic has to be re-routed around these clutter clouds as it would be impossible for an air traffic controller to differentiate between the two and follow the track of an aircraft's route. For these reasons, airports, the MoD and other authorities, regularly object to the building of proposed wind farms causing 5GW of wind power to remain on hold.

Unlike the current generation of ATC radar that scans an area using the familiar antenna rotating around a fixed point with a narrow beam, the Holographic Radar constantly looks in all directions at once. By permanently illuminating the entire 3D field of view, the radar sensor captures vast amounts of data which is then processed in real time by a combination of GPU and CPU power in order to determine the dynamic characteristics of each individual target.

"The processing of these large quantities of data would have previously required around a thousand Cray super computers, costing millions and consuming a substantial amount of energy themselves," said Peter Wurmsdobler, lead software engineer at Aveillant. "Boston Ltd was able to deliver high performance NVIDIA GPU-powered computers from Supermicro UK, making it both technically and economically viable to continuously process all data captured".

Walter Mundt-Blum, Vice President PSG, EMEAI at NVIDIA commented, "By using NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, the Aveillant team was able to open up airspace which previously was not safe to fly in. Being able to process the data accurately and in real time is not only a benefit to air traffic controllers; it also provides an added level of safety for pilots and the public alike."

"Having been able to successfully assist in these trials, we've been able to offer a complete solution to Aveillant's computational requirements, providing the optimum combination of density, power efficiency, cost and performance. Best of all, the underlying technology of this solution can be used for a multitude of tasks in other industries, such as weather forecasting, finance, oil & gas or defence" said Dev Tyagi, General Manager, Supermicro UK.

"The most intriguing aspect of this solution is the ability to offer considerably improved safety for commercial aviation by mitigating the effects of wind farm turbines for radar operators. We are very pleased to have been able to support and successfully deploy such a solution," said Manoj Nayee, Managing Director, Boston Ltd.

About Boston Limited

Boston Limited has been providing first-to-market technology to a diverse client base since 1992. Boston's high performance, mission-critical server, storage and workstation solutions can be tailored for every client. With expertly trained engineers and a dedicated R & D labs facilities, we are able to fully customise the specification, design and branding of a solution in order to help clients solve their toughest business challenges simply and effectively. Since its founding in London, UK, Boston has expanded operations globally. Following on from the successful launch of Boston IT Solutions India in 2009, Boston launched Boston Server & Storage Solutions GmbH in Germany a year later, with offices opening on the East coast of America in 2013. For more information about Boston, please visit www.boston.co.uk and follow @BostonLimited on Twitter.

About Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Supermicro® (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions® for Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Hadoop/Big Data, HPC and Embedded Systems worldwide. Supermicro is committed to protecting the environment through its "We Keep IT Green®" initiative and provides customers with the most energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly solutions available on the market. www.supermicro.com

About Aveillant

Aveillant is a UK technology company spun off from Cambridge Consultants in October 2011. Cambridge Consultant's spin-offs have a track record of success, generating a combined market value in excess of Ј1.5bn and more than 3,000 new jobs. Cambridge Consultants first started working with radar in 1980 and has been developing its capability ever since. They initially focused on short range radar systems specifically designed to provide maximum information on targets in a volume of interest - rather than simply detecting objects that are as far away as possible. http://www.aveillant.com/

For further information, contact:

Apostolos Lambrianides, Marketing Manager
apostolos.lambrianides@boston.co.uk
01727876100