Op-Eds

Cyber

Real hardware, real software, real-time performance: Real-Time Linux - Blog

February 25, 2016

Interactions with the physical world can be tricky ? even dangerous! Let's say you have an Internet of Things (IoT) application controlling a chemical process - perhaps exotic chemicals for an aerospace mission. The IoT devices include sensors for temperature, pressure, flow rate, and tank levels and actuators for pumps, heaters and valves ? including a dump valve ready to vent high pressure. In this situation it's likely you would have analysis and reporting software running, be receiving sensor readings, and have control of the various pumps, heaters and valves. With IoT, computing can be pushed to the edge via gateways and controllers often running sophisticated applications.

Comms

Defining Abaco - Blog

February 18, 2016

Bernie Anger Abaco Systems

As I write this we are on our seventh week ?being Abaco.? If you haven?t heard of Abaco Systems, we?re a brand new company formed when GE spun out its rugged embedded computing business. In the mil/aero market, we were known as GE Intelligent Platforms for the past decade. Our roots go back thirty years, to companies like Radstone Technology, VMIC, SBS Technologies, and Condor Engineering. We?re also a company in transformation - a company that is channelling the energy that comes from acquiring a new identity and new ownership to raise the bar for ourselves, with a laser focus on serving customers.

From The Editor

Remembering the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion - Blog

January 29, 2016

John McHale - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems

Televisions were rolled into classrooms at our high school when the news spread about the crash of the Challenger Space Shuttle. We watched the coverage all day, the launch, the explosion, and President Reagan’s speech. Seeing the pictures of Christa McAulliffe on the news casts yesterday morning that were commemorating the 30th year anniversary of her death along with 6 NASA astronauts when their spacecraft disintegrated moments after liftoff, brought it all back.

Avionics

Intel integrating Wind River subsidiary even more in 2016 - Blog

January 29, 2016

John McHale - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems

Earlier this month Fortune magazine reported that Wind River's run as it's own brand under the Intel umbrella will end as the company absorbs it completely. The news is not surprising as Intel is finishing up it's acquisition of FPGA-maker Altera and doing away with that brand as Altera is becoming Intel the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG).

From The Editor

Will gender neutral job titles introduce change in a culture? - Blog

January 15, 2016

Mariana Iriarte - Technology Editor, Military Embedded Systems

Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus ordered the review of Navy job titles and a report to be completed no later than April 1, 2016. This comes after two West Point alumni graduated Ranger School back in August of last year, therefore breaking standards that once were thought impossible. This particular event, I believe, allowed the opening of all combat roles to women. Now, the Navy begins its long process of assessing and more than likely changing certain job titles to be more gender neutral.

Comms

Counterfeit electronics persistent threat to business and lives - Blog

December 22, 2015

Mariana Iriarte - Technology Editor, Military Embedded Systems

Counterfeit electronics is a persistent matter that will be not easily go away, says Michael Cacheiro, vice president, supply chain management at Lockheed Martin. Incidents will continue to increase, as “counterfeit electronics used by the military increased by 250 percent between 2005-2008 and quadrupled from 2009-2012,” and 21 percent comes from authorized distributers.

Comms

Cryptology, cryptography, and cryptanalysis - Blog

December 22, 2015

Ray Alderman VITA Standards Organization

EVOLUTION OF WARFARE BLOG: Cryptography is a broad, sticky, and mathematically complex, but interesting subject and an integral part of the evolution of warfare. So let’s get some definitions out of the way first. Cryptology is the study of codes, both creating and solving them. Cryptography is the art of creating codes. Cryptanalysis is the art of surreptitiously revealing the contents of coded messages, breaking codes, that were not intended for you as a recipient.

Radar/EW

Top military embedded blogs of 2015 - Blog

December 22, 2015

John McHale - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems

The most popular blogs on Mil-Embedded.com in 2015 covered topics including the sale of GE Embedded to Veritas Capital, legal snags for long-range radar, cyber attacks, manipulating space and time, the Internet of Things, and more. Check out the top ten below.

Radar/EW

Curing the longevity of supply blues - Blog

December 21, 2015

Michael Slonosky Curtiss-Wright

POWER ARCHITECTURE TODAY Blog: Longevity of supply is a concern that can keep embedded military program managers up at night for a long, long time. That’s because the time scale for deployed military systems is impressively lengthy. It’s not unusual for RFPs received today to require single board computers (SBC) that need to be supplied in production volumes into 2025-2030. That support period actually starts at the back-end of production, after an SBC has already been designed in and deployed. The time that it takes to get a selected SBC designed, and the software application written, for a new program can be as long as three to four years.

From The Editor

USS Zumwalt begins its sea trails and sets out to prove its worth - Blog

December 08, 2015

Mariana Iriarte - Technology Editor, Military Embedded Systems

Three years ago this month I said that the next ship I would step on would be a cruise ship, as I would sail onboard luxury doing absolutely nothing except relax and enjoy the view. But today, I would go back just to check out the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000). The ship started its sea trials yesterday and I remember talking about this ship before it had a name, when we were getting ready to go underway for some set of trials of our own. Someone said a new ship was coming, one that would replace the Arleigh Burke-class, one that faster and better.

Comms

Static routing vs dynamic routing on Ethernet networks - Blog

November 25, 2015

Ronen Isaac MilSource

ETHERNET EVERYWHERE BLOG: “Routing” on a network is a common term that I think almost everybody knows and understands today. Just to clarify, routing is the act of finding a path for a data packet to travel from one network to another. However did you know that there are three key elements needed to make this routing happen:

Cyber

IoT: Embedded and Secure - Blog

November 23, 2015

Russell Doty Red Hat

OPEN SOURCE WAY BLOG: Last time I wrote about how the Internet of Things (IoT) is impacting the design of military embedded systems; this month, I'd like to address IoT and security. Specifically, I want to address the security processes involved in managing IoT gateways, which are vital to the successful operation of critical applications.

From The Editor

Astronauts wanted: NASA looks for more space explorers - Blog

November 23, 2015

John McHale - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems

Do you like to travel? Enjoy a spectacular view? Enjoy traveling at high speeds? Moving in zero gravity? Word is NASA hiring astronauts so you may want to ditch the cube walls and get ready for a career in orbit.

Radar/EW

AltiVec is back - Blog

November 23, 2015

Michael Slonosky Curtiss-Wright

POWER ARCHITECTURE TODAY Blog: Freescale’s new T-series processor has brought back the AltiVec floating point SIMD instruction set, the heart of many defense and aerospace digital signal processing (DSP) applications for the last two decades. AltiVec, a mainstay of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) DSP boards for years, went missing in action for one series of previous devices. A disappearing act that led embedded system users to look for an alternative solution.

Radar/EW

GE embedded will be called Abaco Systems - Blog

November 18, 2015

John McHale - Editorial Director, Military Embedded Systems Abaco Systems

As many of you know GE announced it was selling its embedded business to Veritas capital, a venture capital firm in New York City earlier this fall and the organization of about 700 employees would form a new company in January, 2016. Company officials say the deal is expected to close soon, but in the meantime they have announced their new name.... Abaco Systems.