Military Embedded Systems - Fall 2005 - Volume 1 Number 2

Industry Analysis
Extractors
Heat Sink
Heat
Transfer
Slugs
Mezzanine Cover
to write and maintain cumbersome Board
Support Packages (BSPs), which often
need updating every time a chip on the
board changes revision. The Application
Programming Interface (API) approach
moves that responsibility to the chip
supplier and operating system, making
systems easier to upgrade and maintain.
Expensive RTOSs are beginning to give
way to less expensive and increasingly
powerful OSs such as Real-Time Linux
and Carrier-Grade Linux.
Wedge Locks
This is changing for the better. Primarily,
in order to increase data transfer speed,
the microprocessor industry is moving
rapidly towards switched serial interconnect
technology, popularly known as
switch fabrics. This technology reduces
the speed-robbing capacitance typical of
a parallel bus architecture with instantaneous
point-to-point interconnects. Not
only do these interconnects increase data
transmission speed one or two orders of
magnitude, which is important for military
applications such as imaging, they can,
if properly designed, reduce the failure
domain to a single board or Field
Replaceable Unit (FRU). They also dramatically
improve the scalability of military
systems, as the same packetized data
format used over the backplane can be
used between boxes or systems in a large
network. Switched fabric Ethernet-based
backplane standards, first introduced to
Figure 4
the world in 2001 in the PICMG 2.16
Specification, are beginning to be used
for military applications.
Additionally, power distribution concepts
are changing with an emphasis toward
shipping higher voltages across backplanes
in order to reduce the ever-increasing
currents required by Moore’s Law.
(We’ll save cooling problems for another
time.) Localized power conversion is the
norm in standards like AdvancedTCA
and PICMG’s recently ratified advanced
mezzanine card standards.
An entire book could be written about
software development, but as much as
advances in this arena seem to trail hardware
progress, a few things can be said.
Spurred by the wide adoption of the PCI
bus 10 years ago, military board suppliers
are increasingly being freed from the need
Notions are changing
In the commercial communications sector,
the distinction between datacom and telecom
is all but gone as the world’s infrastructure
moves towards packet-based
communications. Military infrastructure,
at least in the US, is joining the movement.
Major initiatives, such as the Department
of Defense’s Warfighter Information
Network Tactical (WIN-T) program, are
based on commercial communication
technologies, including secure wireless
networks, Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP), PCS cellular services, and ATM
data transport. PDAs, laptops, and tablet
computers are widely used in American
command centers worldwide, and e-mail
is as ubiquitous and important as it is in
the civilian sector. The old notions about
ruggedized military computers being
completely customized boxes milled out
of large bars of aluminum are changing.
And they are changing for the better as
the flywheel spins faster.
For more information, contact Joe at
jpavlat@opensystems-publishing.com.
Crystal P4 875
♦Dual 10/100/1000 network Ethernet
♦Up to 800 MHz FSB supporting 128k
through 2MB L2 Cache
♦PICMG 1.2 with 64 bit/66 MHz support
♦Two SATA, One Ultra ATA/100, Floppy support
For more information, contact
a Program Manager at:
Hiawatha, Iowa USA 52233-1204
1.800.378.1636 1.319.378.1636
www.crystalpc.com
RSC# 1401 @www.mil-embedded.com/rsc RSC# 1402 @www.mil-embedded.com/rsc RSC# 1403 @www.mil-embedded.com/rsc
14 / October 2005 Military EMBEDDED SYSTEMS