Articles 101 - 120
Avionics
DO-254: The other safety-critical specification - Story
May 16, 2009
The FAA's RTCA/DO-178B guides designers in developing software certified for flight safety. Meanwhile, its companion hardware specification, RTCA/DO-254 "Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware," is just as integral. Editor Chris Ciufo shares some tips to ease DO-254 certification.
Radar/EW
OpenVPX Industry Working Group: Open for business, or just controversy? - Story
March 17, 2009
The rhetoric is flying as intense debate rages over what might be the newest ?next-generation version of the VMEbus.?
Unmanned
The worst of times, the best of times - A 2009 market and technology view - Story
February 10, 2009
Editor Chris Ciufo shares his perspective on the military market and important technologies for 2009.
Comms
SSDs on solid ground ... and in the air - Story
November 11, 2008
Nonvolatile storage has long been a part of military equipment. After all, bubble memory was available from guys like Intel, Texas Instruments, Allen Bradley, Thomson, and others for a long time. But magnetic bubble memory was last used in legacy military systems before it became really-truly-honestly-no-foolin' obsolete in the late 1980s. Today, anyone with a new cell phone or digital camera knows just how cheap nonvolatile flash storage has become.
Comms
'Software as a product line' offers the right benefits to long life-cycle military programs - Story
October 15, 2008
It's only been in the past five years that Eclipse and Linux evolved from novelties and "Ridiculous!" by opponents, into de facto products in defense system development and deployment. They started out as grassroots movements to fulfill a need: In the case of Eclipse, it was to create a standard framework for development tools; in the case of Linux, it was to break the control of proprietary operating system companies.
Comms
Intel inside ... everything on the battlefield - Story
September 25, 2008
I'm a semiconductor guy by training and a gadget geek by choice. These traits cross paths at only one conference each year: the Intel Developer Forum. This past August, the four-day U.S. show consumed all three floors of Moscone West in San Francisco, hosting almost 3,000 attendees, including nearly 800 journalists/analysts (me included).
Avionics
Virtualization yields hardware optimization and new embedded architectures - Story
July 08, 2008
I've written in this space many times about multicore processors, serial switched fabrics, and virtual environments. But for the years I've been pontificating, I've always assumed that each stood on its own merits - that Freescale 8641D multicore CPUs, for instance, would add more performance to an embedded system. Or that a serial switched fabric such as RapidIO would increase the data bandwidth within a system's interconnect.
Radar/EW
Titans compete in a COTS-is-king world; Hint: It's not all about technology - Story
June 24, 2008
Large COTS suppliers are working hard to compete. Against each other, against the perception of what is COTS against the onslaught of high-quality commodity products from overseas, and even against their customers who sometimes would rather design systems in-house than buy off-the-shelf. Fresh off the 2008 tradeshow season, Im reminded that amidst a surfeit of new technology, from JSR302 safety-critical Java to Intel Atom processors, value-add services and special differentiation still matter.
Radar/EW
Sometimes 6U's size beats 3U: VMETRO talks about volume efficiency, FPGAs, and defense programs - Story
June 24, 2008
At the recent Bus&Board conference, editors Chris Ciufo and Sharon Schnakenburg got a chance to spend several hours with Thomas Nygaard of VMETRO discussing boards, military trends, and the pitfalls of choosing tech that's a bit "too bleeding edge."
Comms
Calling all COTS - Story
May 09, 2008
In this magazine we focus on COTS and technology for the entire military life cycle and it says so right on the cover. While I prefer to emphasize the life cycle part of our mission statement with stories such as our new guest column series Legacy Software Migration, Commercial Off-The-Shelf plays a huge part of what we write about.
Radar/EW
Recession-resistant technology - Story
April 02, 2008
With a recession on the way, or already here, some technologies stand a better chance of receiving funding or being purchased. Technology that can directly make a connection to an end user benefit is the secret here. With 2008 S&T funding reduced by an astounding 20.1 percent to $10.9 billion, the military science fair is over, kids, as only DARPA gets to play with the fun toys. Instead, the DoD prefers to buy only ?right now? capabilities.
Comms
Linux in the military to achieve double-digit growth, but performance is still key - Story
April 02, 2008
MontaVista Software invented the category of embedded Linux commercialization back in 1999, and has remained the leader since then. Increasingly, MontaVista is being considered for defense applications - sometimes pushing aside the better-known Linux-for-defense suppliers such as Wind River or LynuxWorks. I had a chance to conduct an email interview with Jim Ready, MontaVista?s founder and pioneer of the RTOS VRTX. Edited excerpts follow.
Avionics
Small form factors: A new SIG in town - Story
January 13, 2008
First question: What's the most popular open standard board type used in military systems? Answer: the personal computer, both in desktop and laptop sizes. But if we narrow the question to "rugged, deployed systems," you'd primarily find 6U VME boards, followed by 3U CompactPCI, SEM-E, and then a bunch of other types too numerous to mention. For the past 15 years of the COTS era, VME's anything-but-small size has dominated rugged, deployed systems.
Unmanned
What's up with the market? - Story
July 20, 2007
Perceptions, rather than reality, are adversely affecting the embedded COTS market
Avionics
Ah Wind River, where have you been? - Story
May 31, 2007
I reconnect with Wind River Systems, and it's a happy occasion.
Radar/EW
Ops briefing - Story
March 29, 2007
FCS and VPX "free software" AFCEA and AUSA - USS Ranger Museum - magazine acquisitions; there?s so much going on in our embedded military industry that this month's column is intended to be something like a printed RSS feed.
Radar/EW
This year's top trends affecting the military - Story
February 23, 2007
A qualitative look at what may become 2007's most compelling tech stories
Comms
December 7 still lives in infamy - Story
December 01, 2006
For me, December 7 ? Pearl Harbor Day ? isn?t about remembering the death and carnage, the hatred, or the ?glory? of war. It?s a time to reflect on what we learned about technology then, and how quite literally the ?world of technology? continues to evolve today ? from America, to Europe, to India, Korea, China ? and Japan.
Radar/EW
Intel Xeons encroach on PowerPC's territory - Story
September 01, 2006
Intel?s latest crop of desktop and server CPUs might dislodge the PowerPC from embedded applications.
Radar/EW
What's up with Intel and AMD? Everyone loses a little as titans collide, especially the mil market - Story
July 01, 2006
The prestige of having the highest performance mainstream microprocessor is still at stake, but processor giants Intel and AMD seem to be foolishly streamlining their product offerings to focus on winning this epic conquest.
Articles 101 - 120
