Well, the barriers to entry into the avionics market may have come down, if only a little.
I was very surprised when I stumbled on this high-performance (relatively) single-board-computer [1] that is rad-hard and certified for space applications [2]!
Well, as it happens, I don’t plan on firing anything into space any time soon, but this thing is only slightly overkill for the aviation applications. A ready-made COTS solution; that supports Greenhills’ VxWorks and Tornado [3].
The board has an optional built-in MIL-STD-1553 option; ideally we would prefer an ARINC-429 for commercial aviation applications, but with the facilities this board provides, supporting it as an add-on should be no problem.
The unit cost on these things is about $10,000 in quantities of 100, so we’re not talking peanuts; but there are also less hardened engineering prototype versions of the system that might be perfectly acceptable, if you plan on staying within the atmosphere. I did not see cost data on those versions.
The performance data [4] for this little beauty doesn’t quite compare with a desktop computer, but it blows away the typical SBC.
Since the unit is PowerPC-based I have to wonder if they could easily swap out the triple-redundant CPU’s with the “CELL” [5]. Now we’re talking.
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Max is a father, a husband, and a man of many interests. He is also a consulting software architect with over 3 decades experience in the design and implementation of complex software. View his Linked-In profile at http://www.linkedin.com/pro/swarchitect |