Boasting both ubiquity and longevity, Ethernet is winning broad acceptance in the military. Bus-board specs from both VME and PICMG are giving Ethernet a lot of play.
Developing military embedded application software that is portable between platforms, and will remain portable throughout its life cycle, can be a tricky process. Maximum benefits will be obtained by taking care to develop coding rules for portable software, creating a system that can build for all platforms from a single build specification, and writing tools to examine the software in the version control system to detect any violations of the portability rules.
The level of complexity in embedded systems has been steadily increasing, making application portability and reusability essential. Now, component-based technology and model-driven development can be used to improve software portability and reusability.
Power semiconductor devices that must operate in military and space applications are exposed to a variety of radiation sources and their effects, depending on the particular application and its environment. Engineers must select commercial parts carefully, by considering the component, the application, its environment and the type of radiation it is likely to encounter.
In space system designs, antifuse-based FPGAs have traditionally been limited to bus applications by their low densities. A new generation of high-density, antifuse FPGAs provides higher gate counts and radiation hardness, making these devices attractive alternatives to ASICs for payload applications.
