Compact size, simplicity, mature technology and ruggedness keep PC/104 foremost in the minds of military system developers for embedded designs in small spaces.
The combination of PC/104 hardware with Cisco IOS software and the Mobile IP specification facilitate the creation of net-centric applications for military use, allowing mobile units to maintain consistent logical addresses for easy communications.
The inherently rugged PC/104 stack architecture can be made even more reliable with several features, plus design and screening techniques, for space-constrained military systems operating in harsh environments.
Twenty-five years old and still thriving, VME remains a force in military embedded computing. Can it sustain that momentum for the next 25 years as computing shifts away from parallel bus schemes toward switched serial approaches?
System Development and Test Safety-Critical Systems & Software
Although there are similarities between the airborne safety-critical requirements in RTCA/DO-178B and the Common Criteria, ISO 14508, compliance with the higher levels of security in the Common Criteria demands meeting additional security requirements.
New DO-178C guidelines will support modular certification of safety-critical software systems.
A proposed standard for safety-critical development using Java provides encapsulation features that are critical to this effort.
PXI and VXI boards have become entrenched as solutions for testing complex military system designs. Meanwhile, the Ethernet-based LXI standard is paving a path to the future.
