Leveraging COM Express for medical equipment design

Patrick Lee (Arbor Technology)

Modern-day medical applications have a wide spectrum of needs, from the demanding computing requirements of optical imaging technologies - such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), optical coherence tomography (OCT), X-ray computed tomography (CT), computed axial tomography (CAT) scans, and 3D ultra... [read more]

Portable, reliable, and efficient concurrency: Ravenscar Ada tasking and the FACE safety profiles

Dr. Benjamin Brosgol (AdaCore); Dr. Patrick Rogers (AdaCore ); Dr. Dudrey Smith (AdaCore)

Airborne systems that need a small footprint or must comply with an industry assurance standard such as DO-178B [1] or DO-178C [2] are sensitive to size and complexity costs in the run-time support libraries. To answer these needs, the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Technical Standar... [read more]

AI and military RF systems

Ben Hilburn (DeepSig, Inc.); Manuel Uhm (Ettus Research/National Instruments (NI))

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling significant leaps in science and technology, including the fields of digital signal processing (DSP) and radio frequency (RF) systems. Methods nominally labeled as "AI" have been applied to radio systems for decades, but always with the goal of o... [read more]

VITA 49: Software radio's evolving language

Rodger Hosking (Pentek, Inc.)

Overwhelming adoption of software radio as a critical technology for real-time embedded systems spurs defense customers to expand its capabilities for the constantly evolving needs of military applications. With numerous vendors in the market, customers are seeking interoper­ability and easy inserti... [read more]

COM Express is heading towards "server-on-module"

Christian Eder (congatec AG)

With the newly revised (Version 3.0) iteration of the most successful computer-on-module (COM) standard, a new pinout type is added to extend the reach of COM Express to server type applications.

Milestone in abstracting the hardware: Realizing the promise of FACE

Mark Grovak (Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions)

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 envisi... [read more]

Stacked, high-speed DDR4 and DDR5 memory useful in harsh battle environments

Jennifer Keenan (Mercury Systems )

Today's autonomous and artificial intelligence (AI) military systems process an ever-growing amount of sensor data. To handle this extreme workload, system architects must design boards using the fastest FPGA [field-programmable gate array] devices and Intel multicore processors. These devices canno... [read more]

High-energy physics: Controllers for X-ray laser accelerators

Heiko Koerte (N.A.T.); Vollrath Dirksen (N.A.T.)

DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) - one of the world's leading particle-accelerator centers, conducting top-level international research into the fundamental relationships of matter - was tasked with finding a successor technology for its control and data-acquisition systems, which were based ... [read more]

The future of military systems is software-defined and virtualized

Sally Cole (Senior Editor)

Software-defined open virtualization solutions are a smart way to implement next-gen military systems: They're easier to maintain and enable future software and hardware upgrades with minimal risks, costs, and downtime.

FPGA based PCIe-to-VME bridge

Thomas Schnürer, (MEN Mikro Elektronik GmbH)

Since the VME bus is no longer natively supported by current processors, it is essential to implement bridging technologies that take over these functions for this form factor standard. MEN Mikro Elektronik developed a PCIe-to-VME bridge based on FPGA logic as an alternative to discrete components a... [read more]

Reduce smallsat component costs by bridging gap between commercial and QML Class V options

Ken O'Neill (Microsemi )

Constellations of small satellites (smallsats) promise to bring tangible benefits to national security space (NSS) programs, where there is a critical need to minimize construction and deployment costs. Multiple smallsats, defined as satellites with launch mass of 500 Kg or less, can be built quickl... [read more]

COM and IIoT market growth aligns with PICMG initiatives

Jessica Isquith (President of PICMG)

The Computer on Module (COM) market is expected to grow significantly over the next five-plus years, according to multiple market research studies. Within the COM market, COM Express is the recognized leader, with its strongest areas of growth being IIoT [industrial Internet of Things] and adoption ... [read more]

Tackling the challenges of industrial IoT

Doug Sandy (Vice President of Technology for PICMG)

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to transform the way that we deploy industrial applications by combining the best practices from the IT space with cloud-based analytics and machine learning.

Ballistic missile radars pushed to detect widening range of threats

Sally Cole (Senior Editor )

As adversaries develop missile technology to attack the U.S. in ways that can challenge our missile defense - such as conventional and nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-launched land-attack missiles, hypersonic weapons, and space-based missiles that orbit Earth - it's critical to have... [read more]

Implementing a common architecture for military systems

John McHale (Editorial Director)

They're playing together nicely - the Army, Navy, and Air Force, that is - in their efforts to bring a common architecture to electronic systems across all three services. These efforts are resulting in three main initiatives: the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA); Command, Control, Communicat... [read more]

Bringing IoT to the sensor domain: Sensors Expo recap

Justin Moll (Vice President of Marketing at PICMG)

Sensors Expo was held in San Jose from June 26 to 28, 2018. It was great to see a trade show with growing attendance and enthusiasm. Regardless of the type of sensor vendor on display, the trend to connect sensor technologies was widespread. Featured were wireless innovations, an embedded system are... [read more]

Military, aerospace, and physics applications drive new MicroTCA innovations

Justin Moll (Vice President of Marketing at PICMG)

MicroTCA is a highly versatile backplane-based architecture that is utilized in a wide variety of applications. With a high-speed connector, compact size, hot-swappability, and 99.9999 percent achievable uptime, it's a powerful architecture. Particularly in military/aerospace and physics application... [read more]

Next-generation backplane production technology

Gary Routledge (Amphenol Backplane and Systems Integration)

Next-generation data rates are placing higher demands on backplane design, assembly, and test. New production techniques are required to deal with these evolving data-rate realities.

Reduced SWaP and application requirements drive innovations in power supply

Mariana Iriarte (Technology Editor )

Reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) and increased standardization requirements for applications from unmanned aircraft to ground vehicles to portable communications systems are driving military power supply designs. Meanwhile, innovations such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) ar... [read more]

Mission requirements, reduced SWaP drive power supply innovations

Mariana Iriarte (Technology Editor)

Reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) and increased standardization requirements for applications from unmanned aircraft to ground vehicles to portable communications systems are driving military power supply designs. Meanwhile, innovations such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) ar... [read more]

Optimizing avionics reliability with dissimilar redundant architectures

Rick Hearn (Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions)

The potential consequences and acceptable probability of failure of an avionics system dictate the Design Assurance Level (DAL) that must be met in order for it to be certified for flight. The key computing elements of a system - such as the single-board computers (SBCs), graphics cards, and operati... [read more]

GAO: DoD has a pervasive weapon systems cybersecurity problem

Sally Cole (Senior Editor)

Weapon systems operated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) are more software-dependent and networked than ever before, which a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report says opens the door to mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities. The DoD intends to spend $1.66 trillion to develop its current... [read more]

Small sats aim to provide on-demand tactical-level imagery for warfighters

Sally Cole (Senior Editor)

Raytheon is sending a one-of-a-kind small satellite to low Earth orbit to do a proof of concept of a prototype design - originally developed for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - to provide useful imagery directly to military users in the field.

Celebrating 25 years of PICMG

Jessica Isquith (President of PICMG)

Welcome! PICMG is celebrating its 25th year with great momentum and many active committees. Since our founding, nine families of specifications and tens of thousands of successful collaborations have led to billions of dollars in products and solutions across a wide array of markets. We are poised t... [read more]

Machine learning, deep learning networks support drone security in UND research project

Mariana Iriarrte (Technology Editor )

A research team from the University of North Dakota (UND) has been working since mid-2017 under a grant from Rockwell Collins with the aim of addressing cybersecurity concerns involving unmanned aerial systems (UASs), more commonly called drones. The research, which is concluding in early 2019, has ... [read more]

Foreshadow: Researchers discover another Intel processor vulnerability

Sally Cole (Senior Editor )

Two international teams of security researchers have independently and concurrently discovered “Foreshadow,” a new variant of the hardware vulnerability known as “Meltdown,” which exploits a bypass of Intel processors’ secure regions to access memory and data.

FMC enhancements for growing high-speed data needs

Dylan Lang (Samtec)

Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology has proven to be invaluable to embedded designers for many years. Often acting as an all-in-one solution, FPGAs negate the need for ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] technology and reduce the cost of custom IP algorithms in silicon. FPGAs ... [read more]

PC/104 vendors head to Embedded World in strong position, atop a billion-dollar market

PC/104 Staff (OpenSystems Media )

PC/104, well into its fourth decade, remains strong globally in markets such as aerospace, defense, industrial, and medical. Such longevity is a tribute to its inherent ruggedness and the open architecture that enables PC/104 designers to continually integrate state-of-the-art processing technology ... [read more]

Collaboration enables innovation

Jessica Isquith (President of PICMG)

"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles Darwin

New rotorcraft designs, silent operations are key goals in Army, Uber partnership

Mariana Iriarte (Technology Editor )

Warfighters on missions and Uber passengers hitching rides will soon have something in common - both getting done thanks to what are essentially unmanned, flying cars. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and transportation company Uber are partnering to advance future vertical lift technologies ... [read more]

Visions of Sugar Plums!

Jerry Gipper (Editorial Director)

We have 20 sponsors lined up for the 2019 edition of Embedded Tech Trends to be held at The Andaz in San Diego, California on January 28 and 29. Embedded Tech Trends is an industry-wide forum where suppliers of component, board and system level solutions meet exclusively with members of relevant ind... [read more]

MACsec encryption extends the value of copper-based Ethernet LANs

Mike Southworth (Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions)

There is vastly more copper-based twisted-pair Ethernet infrastructure deployed on military and aerospace platforms than there is fiber-optic cable-based wiring. For one thing, the cost of copper cabling and its related connectors keeps being driven downward by the economies of scale brought about b... [read more]

MicroTCA workshop at DESY - 2018

Justin Moll (Vice President of Marketing at PICMG); Susanne Schuster (DESY)

The 7th MicroTCA Workshop for Industry and Research was held at DESY [Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron] in Hamburg, Germany on December 5 and 6, 2018. The workshop was attended by 190 participants from more than 20 research facilities and more than 30 companies from all over the world.