Military Embedded Systems

Abaco Systems

Articles 21 - 40
Avionics

Getting the most out of ARINC 429 - Story

June 09, 2015
Four decades old and counting, the ARINC 429 bus protocol is going strong. Its presence on the A310/320, A330/340, B737, B747, B757, B767, and MD-11 means that it will be popular for many years to come. Even more recent products with highly integrated avionics architectures - such as the B777, B787, and A380 - still use 429 buses to transport sensor data. The same is true for military platforms based on commercial aircraft, including the Navy's P-8 Poseidon.
Comms

The promise of COM Express - Story

April 30, 2015
Cost pressures continue to bedevil military programs. Years of fighting have taken a toll on equipment, while years of sequestration have made upgrading or replacing the equipment more difficult. Budget constraints require everyone involved to pay the utmost attention to life cycle costs at all levels of procurement.
Radar/EW

VME obsolescence prompts thoughts of alternatives - Story

March 23, 2015
A supplier of a small but important VME component recently announced that the part will go obsolete this year. In all probability, the manufacturer plans to move on from VME to something in greater demand from the commercial world. Although the move was hardly surprising in the larger scheme of things, it made news in the corner of the electronics market devoted to the embedded-computing systems used in military and aerospace platforms.
Radar/EW

Prequalified system-level COTS takes the load - Story

January 23, 2015
With military budgets under fire and program schedules increasingly pinched, design managers are focusing more than ever on cost. Gone are the days of gold-plated programs entailing high risk of cost overruns and schedule breaches. Suppliers are on the hot seat to deliver systems within tight cost and time constraints.
Radar/EW

Digital image processing - Story

November 28, 2014
High-definition (HD) digital electro-optic and infrared sensors are shoveling evermore data into the battle space. How can soldiers get that information quickly enough to act on it in a timely manner?
Radar/EW

SWaP sweeps and edge processors adapt - Story

October 01, 2014
Size, weight, and power (SWaP) considerations have always been important for embedded electronics, but as platforms shrink, SWaP constraints are becoming ever more critical. Larger platforms will, of course, continue to use “big” processors that are optimized for performance. However, the proliferation of intelligence at the tactical edge is driving military demand for rugged off-the-shelf chips, modules, and boards that provide just enough performance for their applications. These parts must bu
Radar/EW

FPGA or GPU? - The evolution continues - Story

September 16, 2014
A GE Intelligent Platforms perspective on embedded military electronics trends
Radar/EW

Off-the-shelf maintenance - Story

August 14, 2014
Military procurement has exploited commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software for decades to cut costs and improve performance. However, the maintenance enterprise has progressed at a slower pace. Like an aircraft carrier, it has been difficult to redirect, but in today’s dire budgetary environment the need to do so is ever more pressing.
Radar/EW

Gaming chip changes mil/aero game - Story

June 11, 2014
A GE Intelligent Platforms perspective on embedded military electronics trends
Radar/EW

Software development tools as force multipliers - Story

April 22, 2014
Situational awareness often requires data center processing speeds in the smallest possible package.
Radar/EW

Future cooling concepts for HPEC programs - Story

March 12, 2014
A GE Intelligent Platforms perspective on embedded military electronics trends
Radar/EW

Budget cuts spur use of rugged COTS systems - Story

January 29, 2014
As the U.S. defense budget shrinks, the military's appetite for rugged Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products will continue to grow. The services can no longer afford the protracted development schedules and massive cost overruns often associated with new programs.
Radar/EW

SWaP changes image processing - Story

December 17, 2013
Situational awareness is essential for survival on the battlefield. But while satellites and large surveillance resources packed with sensors and signal processing hardware serve the needs of higher echelons, it has traditionally been difficult to get data to small detachments and individual soldiers within tactical timelines.
Radar/EW

PCI Express switches to P2P in OpenVPX - Story

October 10, 2013
Of all the serial switched fabrics in OpenVPX systems, PCI Express (PCIe) has perhaps the least sex appeal. PCI has, after all, been at the heart of PC architectures from time immemorial – and its offspring, PCI Express, continues to play a key role in modern PCs. But for OpenVPX systems designers in the know, PCIe’s an invaluable asset – especially since an important limitation has been addressed: The Peer-To-Peer (P2P) performance challenge.
Radar/EW

4G Core i7 boards: Best of both worlds - Story

September 10, 2013
For High-Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) applications with very tight space constraints, OpenVPX is the logical technology choice and 3U is the logical form factor. High-speed serial links like PCI Express and Gigabit Ethernet also make sense.
Radar/EW

OpenVPX/InfiniBand: From SWaP to SWaP-C - Story

July 31, 2013
A GE Intelligent Platforms perspective on embedded military electronics trends
Radar/EW

CPU bypass: Critical signal processing operation - Story

June 13, 2013
General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU), using massively parallel GPUs to execute thousands of math instructions simultaneously and repetitively, is a boon to signal processing. But its use in real-time scenarios has been limited...
Avionics

Avionics data bus technology meets the SWaP challenge - Story

May 03, 2013
In military avionics, SWaP is a major challenge. As major contractors refresh and redesign electronics systems, in light of less funding availability, they are asking their suppliers to create smaller, less expensive, subsystem solutions, such as data ...
Unmanned

Video processing on the fly - Story

March 12, 2013
Image processors flex for heavy amounts of remote video data.
Radar/EW

Radar's brave new world: OSA - Story

February 11, 2013
Radar apps are picking up the trend towards COTS and Open Systems Architectures (OSAs).
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