In the good old days, before writing software became “software engineering,” code development was a black art practiced by weird nerdy kids straight out of college. For them, coding was by no means a structured discipline. If you managed to get them to communicate, they might tell you that they were hacking code together and using ad hoc test data to see whether it did what it was supposed to do when they executed it.
Ada is a strongly typed language that is a natural choice for developing high-reliability programs. Some languages such as C are good at low-level-programming but not for solving other challenges – as covered in my previous blog. You need to choose the right tool for the job. Instead of using one language or one tool for every problem, you should provide engineers with multiple options for developing high-reliability software – which is where Ada shines.
Let’s start with the obvious: static analysis on its own is not a silver bullet. It doesn’t guarantee high code quality, safety, or security in your complex military embedded application. Nor does static analysis ensure your application meets the functional requirements defined for your program. Adding to the industry confusion is a lack of equality [...]
Choosing a programming language is a complicated decision as it can greatly influence the expected reliability of a software system — especially in military applications. Almost any language can be used to develop any application, but a language’s original design benefits may not carry over when moving from one domain to another. The Ada language [...]
Arthur C. Clarke famously made the observation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In the radar and signal intelligence world, corps of Ph.Ds are regularly developing mathematically complex algorithms that require significantly more processing power than can be deployed in a contemporary embedded COTS system. These algorithms must sit gathering dust in a drawer until Moore’s Law has driven performance densities sufficiently to enable the needed compute power for that class of algorithm. When any given class of applications is made possible, more demanding algorithms follow in their wake. This way of understanding our market highlights the fact that there are two types of applications that embedded military and aerospace system designers typically confront.
Welcome to the HPEC Vanguard blog. In this blog we will we endeavor to keep you informed about developments in technology, markets, industry standards and trends related to the adoption and use of commercial High Performance Computing (HPC) technology in the rugged embedded military market.
Earlier this year, Wind River announced its support of the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) technical standard, which hopes to resolve two fundamental problems with military procurements.
The debate over Small Form Factor (SFF) design standards is escalating but also becoming entertaining with different views coming from both sides of the Atlantic on how to create SFF designs. Demand for these designs in military C4ISR systems is increasing, but system integrators don’t want to get locked into proprietary solutions. So, embedded computing companies are looking at how they can satisfy this demand as well as the need for lower Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP).
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. For nearly three decades, we have witnessed the evolution of the open systems COTS market as it has grown and changed. I look at that time in three phases of maturity: convergence, specialization, and more recently divergence. We need to credit the VMEbus and all those who labored over it with providing a model that demonstrated that there could be a common architecture that allowed interoperability across multiple vendors. Although far from perfect, there has been an ecosystem surrounding that architecture. There clearly was a convergence upon VMEbus across applications and even vertical segments.
Jim McElroy, VP of Marketing, LDRA