Military Embedded Systems
Op-Eds
Radar/EW
Six customized computers myths that you should know - Blog
November 04, 2013
One of the most common problems executives face is making business decisions about technologies with which they are not familiar. As they survey the crowded marketplace, corporate leaders often rely on information from self-interested vendors, or so-called conventional wisdom.
Comms
Collecting semiconductor products - Blog
October 21, 2013
NEWBURYPORT, MA. I've found where they put the Lost Ark at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- it's in an aftermarket semiconductor warehouse in Newburyport, MA. Seriously, Rochester Electronics has a storage area for products going back decades that is eerily similar to the one in the movie (see photo).
Comms
Radar/EW
Designing OpenVPX systems to support Gen3 >10 Gbaud signaling - Blog
September 30, 2013
Signal Integrity (SI) is becoming an increasingly critical consideration for designers of OpenVPX systems. While system integrators first confronted some SI issues as the embedded industry made the performance advance from Gen1 at 3.125 Gbaud to Gen2 at 6.25 Gbaud signaling, the current transition to Gen3 >10 Gbaud signaling rates, nearly doubling the bandwidth of Gen2 OpenVPX, requires a significant increase in the level of tools, capability, expertise, and know-how to ensure successful design and implementation of a robust latest generation, OpenVPX system.
Comms
Avionics
Ada Watch: Choosing the right Ada subset for strong static guarantees - Blog
August 13, 2013
While Ada offers many features that act as safety guards at run time, by raising exceptions when a violation is detected, some of these features may be too complex to guarantee a safe execution before the program is run. This is the case for example of pointers, which may be used to create arbitrarily complex shared data structures in memory. SPARK is a subset of Ada that forbids these features, most notably pointers, in order to be able to provide strong guarantees at compile time. A preview of the next revision of SPARK called SPARK 2014 is already available, as well as the associated verification tools.
Avionics
Avionics
Code Quality: Dynamic & static analysis combined makes engineers & auditors happy - Blog
March 28, 2013
In the good old days, before writing software became “software engineering,” code development was a black art practiced by weird nerdy kids straight out of college. For them, coding was by no means a structured discipline. If you managed to get them to communicate, they might tell you that they were hacking code together and using ad hoc test data to see whether it did what it was supposed to do when they executed it.
Avionics
Ada Watch: Getting the right programming language for the job - Blog
March 05, 2013
Ada is a strongly typed language that is a natural choice for developing high-reliability programs. Some languages such as C are good at low-level-programming but not for solving other challenges – as covered in my previous blog. You need to choose the right tool for the job. Instead of using one language or one tool for every problem, you should provide engineers with multiple options for developing high-reliability software – which is where Ada shines.
Avionics
Avionics
Radar/EW
HPEC Vanguard: New tools for complex algorithms - Blog
August 28, 2012
Arthur C. Clarke famously made the observation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In the radar and signal intelligence world, corps of Ph.Ds are regularly developing mathematically complex algorithms that require significantly more processing power than can be deployed in a contemporary embedded COTS system. These algorithms must sit gathering dust in a drawer until Moore’s Law has driven performance densities sufficiently to enable the needed compute power for that class of algorithm. When any given class of applications is made possible, more demanding algorithms follow in their wake. This way of understanding our market highlights the fact that there are two types of applications that embedded military and aerospace system designers typically confront.
Radar/EW
HPEC Vanguard: blogging on advances in HPEC technology in the embedded COTS defense & aerospace market - Blog
August 06, 2012
Welcome to the HPEC Vanguard blog. In this blog we will we endeavor to keep you informed about developments in technology, markets, industry standards and trends related to the adoption and use of commercial High Performance Computing (HPC) technology in the rugged embedded military market.
From The Editor
COTS is a bad word in rad-hard community - Blog
July 18, 2012
MIAMI. Often a rad-hard supplier this week at the Nuclear Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) in Miami would tell me his product is available off-the-shelf, but cringed at the notion that it would ever be considered COTS or commercial-off-the-shelf.
Avionics
The New FACE of Avionics - Blog
June 27, 2012
Earlier this year, Wind River announced its support of the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) technical standard, which hopes to resolve two fundamental problems with military procurements.
Unmanned
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COM Express enables application-specific data acquisition systems
October 12, 2011
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Enhanced Full-Motion Video advances military UAS surveillance - Multistream image processing and routing in real time
October 06, 2010
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COTS vendors, while concerned about extensive DoD budget cuts, see opportunities for retrofits, unmanned systems
October 12, 2011
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Deploying ruggedized platforms for unmanned vehicles
June 20, 2011
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JDL Level 2-4 information fusion engine released by Larus Technologies
May 23, 2013
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DARPA Adaptive Radar Countermeasure program contract awarded to Leidos and Exelis
June 01, 2015
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The Internet of Things for the intelligence community
July 23, 2015
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Predictive analytics and the industrial IoT: Thinking about military adoption
September 10, 2015
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Open standards ease Multi-Level Security (MLS) systems integration
July 27, 2011
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Domain-specific property checking with advanced static analysis
February 17, 2011
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Should we put up with software that doesn't work?
September 02, 2011
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Protecting integrated circuits from silicon Trojan horses
February 10, 2009
Comms
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DNA protects electrical components against counterfeiting
June 16, 2011
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OtterBox arms the military with rugged technology
February 18, 2009
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Navy's NMCI network speeds warfighter's chance to get inside the adversary's OODA loop: An exclusive interview with HP's Bill Toti,
April 29, 2011
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Obsolescence management: Another perspective
February 10, 2009