Engineering Types

Sopposedly the fpga guy isn't 6 months into the project, or such issues as clock frequency or gross device type wouldn't be coming up, now.

RL

Reply to
legg
Loading thread data ...

Whoa Mule, Whoa ! ! !

RL

Reply to
legg

I think I trust asynchronous logic over code any day. I have known CPUs freeze up for all sorts of strange reasons in hostile environments. 8kV flashovers used to cause no end of trouble on mass spectrometers.

I also like physical interlocks with my own padlock on it when I am in the firing line of a powerful laser. YMMV.

Software can misbehave so as a software engineer I don't trust it!

Probably but he reacts badly to such observations.

I thought the space shuttle used an IBM AP-101 pseudo 360 style machine with an aerospace pedigree already and modified microcode. So does NASA:

formatting link

formatting link

I don't think the 386 was space flight qualified at the time since it wasn't even manufactured until 4 years after the first Shuttle flew.

ISTR the Shuttle flew even before the first 8088 IBM PC was sold too.

formatting link

formatting link

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

Yes, very good point. But, with certain FPGA vendors, even if one of their parts goes out of production, it MIGHT be easier to migrate/upgrade to another of the same manufacturer's parts. My only experience is with Xilinx, and I've migrated some IP several times to newer FPGA families. It really wasn't too difficult.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Yes, you're correct, the 386s were part of the cockpit display system upgrades.

They never touched the AP-101 flight control computers from a hardware perspective AFAIK other than to switch to solid-state RAM rather than core memory at some point, it would have been prohibitively expensive to port a well-validated codebase to a new processor for that application.

The rumor I heard was IBM charged a million bucks a line to muck with the codebase and then do all the validation that the change hadn't affected anything else, sounds apocryphal but maybe not far from the truth.

Reply to
bitrex

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.