Op-Eds

Comms

Reviewing DMSMS 2013: Collaboration brings new beginnings - Blog

March 25, 2014

Hurricane Isaac’s interruption of Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS) 2012 and subsequent rescheduling instigated the pairing of DMSMS with the Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC) for the 2013 event, located in Kissimmee, FL and hosted by the Navy. Bringing together these two complementary aspects of Department of Defense (DoD) operations created a unique opportunity for raising cross-disciplinary collaborations. Looking back, the pairing of DMSMS and DMC is a natural progression. The overlap of the two conferences provided a logical platform for discussion around balancing affordability and obsolescence risk amongst active defense programs: a threat currently facing every facet of the military's manufacturing and sustainment mission.

Comms

BAM BLOG: De-mystifying semiconductor IP - Blog

March 19, 2014

George Karalias Rochester Electronics

Before & After Market (BAM) Blog: Nowadays, it’s called IP. Decades ago, it was just called software. By either name, it is the programming inside a chip that makes the chip unique. Software/IP is also a big factor in product lifecycle management (PLM).

Comms

BAM Blog: chip makers respond to mil-spec market pressures - Blog

February 24, 2014

George Karalias Rochester Electronics

Before & AfterMarket (BAM) Blog: The military market is renowned for developing and implementing the most advanced technology available. However, a device that’s central to most of this technology – the semiconductor – is lagging in the military-market design space.

Comms

BAM Blog: How packaging issues accelerate EOL - Blog

February 06, 2014

George Karalias Rochester Electronics

Before & AfterMarket (BAM) Blog: Nobody likes to be duped. Anyone who has ever bought a “designer” handbag on the street at a huge discount quickly figures out the deal was too good to be true. Something that looked genuine on the outside turns out to be fake.

Comms

BAM BLOG: When buying based on cost doesn?t make sense - Blog

January 15, 2014

George Karalias Rochester Electronics

Before & AfterMarket (BAM) Blog: Most of the public debate about onshore versus offshore manufacturing has to do with the cost of production and domestic-market competitiveness. But in many cases, the debate should not be exclusively about cost – it should be about trust.

Avionics

BAM Blog: obsoleted semiconductors and DO-254 - Blog

December 18, 2013

Peter Marston Rochester Electronics

Before and Aftermarket (BAM) Blog: As semiconductors become more and more complex, guaranteeing that they can still function correctly in safety-critical applications is proving increasingly difficult; and in many cases, system testing to assure correct operation under all foreseeable equipment operating conditions is often impossible. The avionics industry has recognized this problem and introduced guidelines for manufacturers to follow to overcome the testing dilemma.

Avionics

BAM Blog: heads up on components availability for heads-up displays - Blog

November 27, 2013

George Karalias Rochester Electronics

BEFORE & AFTER MARKET (BAM) BLOG: Jet fighters and the family car will have several things in common in the near future. When a disruptive technology is developed, prior generations of similar technologies are significantly impacted. In the consumer market, customers can generally adopt new technologies rapidly if the price point is right. Conversely, higher-value equipment with long operating life times does not have this luxury. Manufacturers of prior generations of military, space, and aerospace equipment may find their supply chain disrupted as cost-conscious vendors adapt to a more volatile market cycle.

From The Editor

John Rynearson named first VITA Hall of Fame inductee - Blog

November 20, 2013

John Rynearson, technical director of VITA, is the first person to be inducted into the newly created VITA Technologies Hall of Fame. The news took him by pleasant surprise, announced during today’s VITA Standards Organization (VSO) meeting in Scottsdale, AZ, in front of his friends and peers in the industry. After the announcement was given by John McHale, editorial director of Military Embedded Systems magazine, the room filled with applause and congratulations.

Comms

BAM BLOG: Counterfeits: the 2,000 versus 200 Equation - Blog

November 13, 2013

Daniel Deisz - VP of Design, Rochester Electronics Rochester Electronics

Before & AfterMarket Blog (BAM). At first glance, having 2,000 component suppliers to choose from -- versus 200 – is a good thing. Competition drives down prices and component selection appears bountiful. In the electronics supply chain, though, things don’t always work that way. In fact, the “2,000 vs. 200” equation is downright dangerous. Almost any vendor can sell a component, but not all vendors are authorized to do so. This is a big distinction.

Radar/EW

Six customized computers myths that you should know - Blog

November 04, 2013

William Finn AMREL Rugged Computers

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

John M. McHale III - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems

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

HED: AS6081 - A Partial Solution When the Authorized Channel has no Solution - Blog

October 08, 2013

Daniel Deisz - VP of Design, Rochester Electronics Rochester Electronics

Radar/EW

Designing OpenVPX systems to support Gen3 >10 Gbaud signaling - Blog

September 30, 2013

Bob Sullivan Curtiss-Wright

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

Code Quality: Improving testing for military-grade applications - Blog

September 18, 2013

Mark Pitchford LDRA Technology

Avionics

Ada Watch: Choosing the right Ada subset for strong static guarantees - Blog

August 13, 2013

Yannick Moy AdaCore

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.