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Weekly Updates"WE'RE THE ONLY company in the world right now with something that's legitimately called a wearable supercomputer," says Nick Granny, chairman and chief technical officer at Bloomington-based MNB Technologies.
MNB has created a family of products based around reconfigurable computing, but the one getting the most buzz will allow military and commercial users to move out into the field with smaller supercomputers--and now wearable ones. Last month, the company shipped its prototype for performance testing before its ultimate use by the Air Force in simulation and computer-assisted training. With the wearable supercomputer, the training goes to the field and staff can remain properly deployed and available for missions. Live training can also be reduced, he adds. "It's cheaper, it's faster and it's safer."
The wearable super-computer, with the raw computing power of six to 12 desktop machines, runs on Windows XP Professional and consists a one-pound ultra-mobile computer about the size of a paperback book with a five-inch display and keyboard. Attached is an accelerator module, a circuit board with a type of chip that allows the computer to run up to 100 times faster. Then add the visor with a display for each eye, giving the effect of watching a 54-inch high-resolution monitor from six feet away.
The wearable supercomputer could potentially be used by Homeland Security and public safety agencies, in scientific research, engineering and earth resource exploration, agriculture, and in health care, where it could be used in the field for computer-assisted triage in a disaster. "A lot of things become possible when you can move a very powerful computer into a portable application," says Granny "It's really a new paradigm in computing."
The high-risk development stuff is all behind them now, says Granny, most of it funded with research dollars from federal SBIR and STTR programs and Indiana SBIR matching grants. "We're ready to ship product," he says. "It's ready for production." The basic wearable supercomputer unit will cost about $5,000--about what a personal computer cost in the 1980s, he quips, with no more than half of that cost being added on for customized software. In the Air Force contract MNB provided the hardware only; for other customers it can provide customized software as well. What the government grants don't fund is marketing and the company is looking for angel capital for that.
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When sales take off, the company will need about 25 in production and service. They'll most likely be located in office space just outside downtown in a HUBZone to take advantage of special government contract opportunities.
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