2024 Year in Review: A successfully busy year at Systel

We take a look back at a hugely productive year for the Systel team, from new products to growing our global footprint, as well as exciting industry events. 2024 was a year of many achievements, underpinned by the hard work and dedication from the Systel family, and here we review some of our most exciting moments and wider industry trends.

Innovation and new products

New products

It’s no surprise that in the computing world innovation happens at a rapid pace. At Systel we’re committed to mission success, so staying ahead of technology trends and ensuring our systems are up to date is a top priority. This year has been testament to that with the introduction of several new products that integrate the latest technologies to meet new and emerging customer requirements.

At a successful AUSA 2024 in Washington D.C., Systel introduced several new products, including new versions of its highly successful Kite-Strike and Sparrow-Strike embedded computers, both incorporating next-gen Intel x86 architecture. The x86 versions are particularly suited to military applications, especially as the x86 architecture is widely used and integration is straightforward for the end user. We were also excited to showase our MIL-SPEC ruggedization capabilities with “Operation Sunken Sparrow”, succesfully running a facial recognition real-time AI algorithm throughout the conference on a completely submerged Sparrow-Strike Orin NX system (IP67 rated).

We were delighted that our product launches were covered by our friends in the media, including Military Embedded Systems and Shephard Media. We were equally honored to have our Sparrow-Strike x86 product awarded the 4-Star Best in Show Award at AUSA by Military Embedded Systems, the highest level award in the Embedded Computing category.

In addition, Systel launched its new Gray Wolf 2 product at AUSA 2024, a high-density, high-performance rugged compute solution. This rackmount solution provides immense data center 4U performance in a compact and rugged 2U form factor.

This coincided with Systel’s launch of the Wolf family of rackmount servers in 2024. Taking inspiration from this powerful, fierce and highly intelligent animal, each ‘Wolf’ rackmount server has its own unique characteristics that makes it suited to military and industrial applications. These include Gray Wolf, Red Wolf, Arctic Wolf and Timber Wolf – which you can read more about here.

Commercial autonomy is also a growing market for Systel, and new to the market this year was the Badger embedded solution. Badger is a next-gen industrial rugged autonomy compute solution designed specifically for the commercial industry. It is an ultra-small form factor solution based on a COTS design, and integrates the Orin NX SOM. It features robust IO including CAN, GPIO, WiFi, and GMSL, and is industrial rugged with a wide operating temperature range and IP67 sealed. Moreover, it sits at a cost point more suited to the commercial market.

Dual-architecture approach

In 2024, Systel also highlighted its latest dual-architecture approach for its embedded products, where customers can choose between powerful ‘AI at the edge’ or ‘compute at the edge’ solutions. The former includes technology such as the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin SOM, the world’s most powerful embedded AI computing engine, while the latter features next-gen Intel x86 COM-HPC architecture (mentioned above).

This dual-architecture approach gives customers the flexibility to choose what is most appropriate for their mission requirement, all within the same form factor and maintaining the mil-spec ruggedization Systel is renowned for.

PCIe 5.0 – a new generation

In addition to our dual architecture approach, we also explored how we are introducing the next generation of PCI Express (PCIe) – Gen 5 – into many of our systems. PCI Express has been around for many years and is a common high-speed interface standard for most PCs and Macs.

It is used to connect and transfer data to and from a range of components, from storage to graphics cards, and much more.

The higher data transfer speeds afforded by PCIe 5.0 – double that of the previous 4.0 generation – addresses a critical challenge for users, especially in the military, where the data input and output from across the battlespace continues to increase significantly. Expect to see more PCIe 5.0 in the future!

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) remains a hot topic and continues to dominate discussions across various markets and verticals. That’s no different for the defense and industrial sectors where Systel provides its solutions; AI is seen as a critical enabler for missions and is likely to provide a real battlefield or competitive advantage against threats in the future.

Systel’s embedded computers provide significant AI capabilities to end users, especially customers that select our products with powerful Jetson AGX Orin SOM capability. These products are particularly important for uncrewed systems – especially robotics or drones – that are deployed at the edge and require AI/ML for autonomous operations.

In 2024, we explored how AI was being used to underpin new drone tactics such as swarming, as well as autonomous navigation and terminal guidance in contested environments. This is no longer science fiction, and the current conflict in Ukraine has already shown real-world examples of this taking place – as we wrote about here in our most popular blog of 2024.

We published an article for Military Embedded Systems on system upgradability, and how easing the burden of vehicle upgradability will enable US forces to stay at the edge of AI developments now and into the future.

Talk of drones autonomously targeting people quite rightly raises concerns, and for this reason we also explored how the Department of Defense (DoD) and NATO are working to introduce and operate AI-enabled systems responsibly – including the use of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS).  

Systel is going places

2024 roadshow

We were delighted this year to pack our travel bags and go out on the road last spring, showcasing the latest rugged computing technologies! It was an immense pleasure to meet our customers, prospects and users face-to-face; and importantly learn more about how they use our products, the challenges they face, and receive all-important feedback for future developments to help us better align our product roadmaps with theirs.

The team racked up miles criscrossing the country from April to June. The roadshow also took on an international flavor with forays into Canada and France, which was tres bien, as the locals would say.

Growing our global team and footprint

Systel is proud to be a US company, but we also have global aspirations and see opportunities for our high quality rugged solutions across the world. In 2024, Systel moved forward with its global expansion plans with agreements with key strategic partners, most notably in Europe and Australia.

Europe is a key emerging market for Systel and our ITAR-free products closely align with the digitalization that is currently taking place in the region. In 2024, we wrote about the significant uptick in defense investment and modernization that is currently place in Europe, principally as a result of the war in Ukraine – read the full blog here. A core part of many European defense projects is industrial offset agreements and local participation, so we are working closely with local partners to ensure these requirements are met.

This is also a similar situation in Australia, where we have been making strides in recent years to respond to requirements from the Australian Defence Forces, and that includes work with local partners including Australian firm REDARC Defence & Space. This partnership was on display at LAND FORCES 2024 in Melbourne, where the two companies came together to showcase a mission-ready INEOS Grenadier vehicle.

Conclusion

2024 has been a fantastic year for Systel, from technology developments, to expansion across markets and company functions, as well as engaging our customers and, most importantly, delivering best-in-class rugged compute solutions. Systel is proud of the work of our dedicated team members and we look forward to 2025 and continuing our fantastic work with customers and partners across the world.