Articles
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The November VITA Standards Organization (VSO) standards meeting was held in Tempe, Arizona. This update is based on the results of that meeting. Contact VITA if you are interested in participating in any of these working groups. Visit the VITA website (http://www.vita.com) for details on upcoming VSO meetings. ANSI accreditation Accredited as an American National [...]
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SOSA demonstration system aims to show what open architectures are made of
Pentek, Herrick Technology Laboratories (HTL), and Kontron have developed products aligned with the Sensor Open Systems Architecture [SOSA™] Technical Standard that are used in a new 3U VPX demonstrator system designed to illustrate the capabilities of open systems architectures. This flight-qualified system is ideal for electronic warfare (EW), SIGINT, radar, and communications applications. The SOSA [...]
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VPX ecosystem steps up
The first serious blast of winter just hit my area! It made me realize that we are not far away from the ninth annual Embedded Tech Trends forum. Scheduled for January 27 and 28 in Atlanta, Georgia, it promises to be an intense couple of days. I always look forward to the presentations and catching [...]
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Mezzanine madness: The future of VITA mezzanines
It has been several years since the introduction of a new mezzanine form factor for low-profile applications. The VITA membership has been doing some soul-searching to determine what should be next. Plenty of controversy is in the air, with everything from simple right-angle edge connections and optical links to the carrier being thrown into the fray. [...]
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VPX road map
The original work on VPX started in 2004 with the formation of the VITA 46 working group. Since then, many enhancements have been added to the family of standards supporting the VPX architecture. Features such as advanced cooling schemes and connectivity – for RF and optical – have greatly extended the capability of VPX-based platforms, enabling them [...]
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Is Arm the future for airborne platforms in military and aerospace?
In recent years, Arm processors have made a quiet, understated entry into the military/aerospace market. With a well-established reputation in commercial markets for bringing high performance to low-power mobile devices – such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables – it’s no surprise that Arm’s potential was recognized in an industry where size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints [...]
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VITA Standards activity updates
The March VITA working groups meeting was held in Las Vegas. This update is based on the results of that meeting. Contact VITA if you are interested in participating in any of these working groups. Visit the VITA website (http://www.vita.com) for details on upcoming face-to-face meetings. ANSI accreditation Accredited as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developer and a submitter [...]
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Sizing the market – risk management
We just wrapped up the latest VITA working group updates and meetings in Las Vegas, right at the beginning of March Madness. Walking the Strip and through the casinos got me to thinking about why people visit Las Vegas. Many are there for the shows and people watching. Many, many others are there for the [...]
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Milestone in abstracting the hardware: Realizing the promise of FACE
The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium, part of The Open Group, was formed to establish a standard common operating environment to support portable capability-based applications across Department of Defense (DoD) avionics systems. Key to the common operating environment envisioned by FACE is the definition of an interface for operating systems and board support packages [...]
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Keep pace with a standardized development process
Standardization has been an objective in test organizations for decades. In 1961, D.B. Dobson and L.L. Wolff of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) published a paper, “Standardization of Electronic Test Equipment.” The paper presented the principles, criteria, and techniques used in the investigation and prototyping of multipurpose missile system test equipment. The goal of most [...]
Rick Hearn, Curtiss-Wright Defense Systems
Nick Butler, National Instruments