Urban reconnaissance planning: Discovering new applications with tactical high performance computing

High performance computing (HPC) has been a key enabler for discovery in science, engineering, and business. HPC being a catalyst for innovation, new capabilities are anticipated for the concept of tactical HPC. The goal of tactical HPC project is to advance computational capabilities of individual Soldiers at the tactical edge by leveraging mobile HPC systems. Since tactical edge is complex, dynamic, and uncertain, significant opportunities exist for real-time computing. As an example of enabling new capabilities at the tactical edge, compute-intensive urban reconnaissance planning application is presented. With GPU accelerator augmented systems, this computationally expensive algorithm was solved at interactive speeds. We demonstrate enhancing situational awareness and tactical intelligence by deploying HPC-in-a-box technology to the tactical edge.