A179 Lightning embedded mission computer

The A179 Lightning is an embedded mission computer from Aitech, built as a sealed, fanless GPGPU system around the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module. It is intended for edge AI, video and signal processing next to the sensors of drones, autonomous vehicles and other airborne or ground platforms that need a rugged onboard computer in a very small housing.

The compute core is a 6-core ARM v8.2 64-bit CPU combined with an NVIDIA Volta GPU that has 384 CUDA cores and 48 Tensor cores. Aitech specifies 21 TOPS at INT8 precision and 1050 GOPS per watt, which is the figure to use when comparing performance within a limited power budget. Two NVDLA deep-learning accelerator engines are available for neural-network inference, so detection and classification workloads can run alongside the GPU. The system carries 8 GB of LPDDR4x memory and supports CUDA, Vulkan, OpenGL and OpenGL ES.

Video handling is a main use case. The board encodes and decodes H.264 and H.265 in hardware, and its capture inputs accept SDI (SD and HD) and composite NTSC or PAL video, with up to eight channels captured at the same time. For a payload integrator this means several camera feeds can be recorded, analysed and streamed from one unit without loading the CPU with codec work. Storage options include an NVMe SSD and a removable micro SD card.

Interfaces cover what a vehicle or payload bus usually needs: Gigabit Ethernet, DVI/HDMI output, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, CAN bus, UART serial ports and discrete signals. Four I/O variants (00, 01, 02 and 03) are offered, and Aitech lists starter kits with an external power supply, power cable and I/O cables, as well as separate mating connector sets for the power and I/O connectors, which simplifies harness design.

The ultra-small-form-factor housing is environmentally sealed to IP65 and has no fan, so there are no moving parts and no ventilation openings that dust or moisture could enter. This suits unmanned aircraft and vehicles exposed to vibration, weather and contamination, where size, weight and power are tightly limited.

Typical applications named by Aitech are autonomous vehicles, surveillance and targeting systems, electronic warfare systems, drones and wearable equipment. In an unmanned aircraft the A179 Lightning can serve as the mission computer that runs object detection, target tracking, sensor fusion and video processing, and passes results to the flight controller or ground link over Ethernet, CAN or serial connections.