The US military has been a General Micro Systems customer for more than thirty years, reflecting GMS’s ability to deliver reliable and high performance devices off-the-shelf to meet a wide variety of needs. Major aerospace and defence programs serviced by GMS include missiles, helicopters, unmanned ground vehicles, wearable systems and Air Force One.

Of course, we take great interest in what it is that makes General Micro Systems a trusted supplier to the military. There are a number of important factors among which long product life is very significant. Upgradable processor technology means that replacement as part of the normal maintenance cycle is straightforward and low cost. The ruggedness of systems that have been tested in extreme environments on and off the battlefield is another.

Form factor is an expression often heard in computing; for those who have not come across it, the “form factor” describes the specification of the motherboard: dimensions, type of power supply, number of ports on the back panel and so forth. Standard form factors bring the advantage of interchangeability across both vendors and technology generations. The importance of form factor in military applications is that it decides what size the case will be and the military needs computers with the best possible size, weight and power (SWaP) ratio.

Perhaps even more important are the efficiency with which the devices are cooled (a computer that overheated in battle would be worse than useless) and the performance/power ratio.

GMS multi-stage regulators are designed for all GMS products to reduce power consumption while the patented RuggedCool technology has no equal as a cooling system anywhere in the world and also outperforms all competition in shock and vibration absorption.

GMS also works closely with the US Navy on, for example, Tomahawk weapon control and electronic warfare devices while collaborating with main contractors such as Lockheed Martin to wring unprecedented improvement and extend the life of the destroyer fleet.