Raytheon Co., the world's largest missile maker, and International Business Machines Corp. developed a chip that may help prevent the jamming of handheld global-positioning system devices used by the U.S. military.
The Monarch computer chip, short for morphable networked micro-architecture, is a "system on a chip" powerful enough to replace the circuit boards previously needed for anti-jamming applications, Raytheon engineer Gillian Groves said.
Raytheon may sell the chips to the U.S. military for anti- jamming within the next year, Groves said, without providing details on the potential value. Developed with about $70 million in company and Defense Department funding, the Monarch outperformed Intel Corp.'s quad-core Xeon "by a factor of 10," said Michael Vahey, who led development of the chip for Raytheon.
"This one chip can provide a complete system," said Vahey, whose title is principal investigator for Monarch technology at Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon. "It's a very complex chip, and it has a lot of capability."
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The Monarch chip can reconfigure itself for different tasks, such as signal control or data processing, to optimize performance on the fly and reduce the number of chips needed in computer systems, Raytheon said.
The chip is primarily intended for sophisticated defense applications such as space radar and video processing, which require small size and low power. Raytheon also is exploring high-end commercial applications including use in smart cars and highways, and medical imaging, Groves said.
The Monarch processor was developed under a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.
Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems in El Segundo, Calif., led an industry team including the University of Southern California, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Mercury Computer Systems. IBM will manufacture the chips, Groves said.
Raytheon said it has begun tests on Monarch prototypes to verify they'll function as designed and to establish their maximum throughput and power efficiency.
Tom Beermann, spokesman for Santa Clara-based Intel, said he didn't have information available on Raytheon's chip to make a performance comparison.