NMP ST8 Dependable Multiprocessor: Technology and Technology Validation Overview

†† is a major step toward NASA's long- held desire to take advantage of high-performance, Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) technology in onboard processing solutions for space applications. DM is a cluster of high performance COTS processors connected with a high speed interconnect and operating under the control of a radiation-hardened system controller and platform and technology-independent fault tolerant middleware. The platform and technology -independent middleware is DM technology. The development of DM technology represents a significant paradigm shift. For applications that only need to be radiation tolerant, DM technology allows t he user to fly ten to one hundred times the processing capability of current radiation hardened space systems. As a software-based and platform and technology-independent technology, DM enable space missions to employ current COTS devices as opposed to tec hnologies 2 or 3 generations behind the state - of-the-art. The DM project conducted its TRL6 Technology Validation in 2008 and 2009. This paper provides an overview of DM technology and a summary of the TRL6 technology validation effort. A companion paper, NMP ST8 Dependable Multiprocessor: Technology Validation Approach and Results, provides an overview of the technology validation approach and the DM model validation effort. DM was developed as one of four ST8 flight experiments. A significant effort went into the design and development of the DM flight experiment system. Although NASA eliminated the TRL7 flight experiments from the ST8 project, the DM flight experiment is also discussed in this pap er. This paper describes the original ST8 flight experiment flight configuration and an updated flight configuration which is not subject to the constraints of the original ST8 spacecraft. The paper also describes post -TRL6 technology developments including upgraded DM implementation with Open MPI, true open system HAM (High Availability Middleware), and enhanced intermittent fault detection capability. More details are provided in the DM TRL6 Technology Validation Report. ‡‡