November 29, 2016
With new platforms scarce in today?s budget-constrained defense environment, more funding emphasis has been placed on upgrading the existing electronics suites in avionics, radar, shipboard, and other military applications, which means solving problems such as reducing the heat generated by modern processors in size, weight, and power (SWaP)-constrained environments and managing long-term life cycle costs. In this Q & A with Andy Mason, Head of the Technology Platforms Group at Kontron?s Avionics, Transportation, and Defense division, he discusses the thermal management challenge in embedded computing upgrades and how open architectures and a building block approach that leverages commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) can help manage it across multiple platforms while keeping development costs down. Edited excerpts follow.