Today’s embedded-system designers have a great variety of processor types to select from, with FPGAs [field-programmable gate arrays] and GPUs [graphics processing units] adding their own various advantages and disadvantages for consideration in contrast to the more familiar CPUs [central processing units]. Understanding these characteristics and how FPGAs and GPUs stack up can help system integrators make the right choice when choosing and installing a processor, to be used either individually or in combination with other types of processors.

To exploit the potential benefits of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, video analysis, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality and virtual reality, and other innovative technologies on mobile platforms at the tactical edge, Department of Defense (DoD) communications programs must effectively deploy advanced IT infrastructure, connectivity, and compute resources. The Army understands this need: It is investing in research, standardization, and demonstration to ensure that future vehicle networks deliver these benefits while minimizing cost, enabling rapid fielding, and facilitating ongoing modernization. These moves also leverage modular, open standards-based COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] technologies.

The death of VMEbus – a technology used so heavily in military and aerospace applications – has, like the death of Agent 007, been predicted many times for many years, but all those premature death reports have never come to pass. Why?

An optimized investment on a leading program for the greater good of the warfighting enterprise will enable the technology breakout and multidomain convergence essential to increasing warfighter and weapon-system effectiveness for the collective national defense.

The integration of real-time data from all of the U.S. armed services and coalition partners will drive greater operational intelligence and more timely and accurate responses for all military operations. This approach is now a formal U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) directive to become a datacentric enterprise integrating information across all sea, land, air, space, and cyberspace domains for operational dominance. A standards-based connectivity framework that enables a global data space can provide a highly adaptable foundation for optimizing this real-time information for Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).

Ah … VME. I first wrote about the VMEbus specification in late 1996; now, in just under a year it will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Not much rust has grown on the open standard in its four decades, as VME-based products are still being designed into military programs today.

Aerospace and government defense program users have unique needs when it comes to FPGA [field-programmable gate array] devices, both in terms of security and in terms of long-term deployments. Increasing use of unmanned systems and other autonomous assets has created new security challenges. Physical unclonable function (PUF)-based security technologies for FPGAs have been created with these unique needs in mind. These solutions are instantiated through the user configuration file, so they are easy to implement and can be applied to the entire range of Xilinx FPGAs – even those already in the field.