Upgraded to a 386

[hammersley]

I heard on the news two days ago that the new 3D radar guidance system on the B2 has been upgraded to a 386! So that's where all those junk PC's are going! Only kidding - I know that the military grade secure PC's use older chips - but can't someone get a state of the art chip where it really needs to be? On the other hand this report could be all BS as well. Any real info... ...

 

[LSMITH]

In dedicated systems there are no peripherals to run, no other processes that use processor or memory. In a dedicated system it would really shock you how fast and efficient the 386 or even slower can be. The chipsets are also maximized for the particular application. It is very common in the industrial controllers as well. The "old" chipsets have also been around long enough that we KNOW how to make them survive hostile environments too.



A state of the art processor would scare the crap out of me in some applications.

 

[Rman]

LSMITH is right. I work with military avionics systems daily and yes there is room for some improvement, but bottom line is that the chip functions for what it is designed to do. There are no fancy gadgets and do dads for the chip to operate. It has a simple job and that is all that is asked of it. Its like having a faucet in your kitchen sink that flows 4000 acre feet of water through it. Yeah the pressure is great but why have that much damn water... same principle. That chip performs the speed that the system needs, any faster of a chip and nothing would be faster because when integrated with sensors and hydrualics coupled with synchros to activate, nothing will happen any faster with a P4 than a 286. Reliability is a major concern and with the B2 nuclear hardening. Sensitive chips would not benefit at all.

 

[rkressg]

The 386 processor is one of the most bullet proof processors ever built. Many corperations are running firewall software on these computers because they are cheeper than a PIX and they never crash.

Like LSmiths said, In dedicated systems there are no peripherals to run, no other processes that use processor or memory

No need for anything more

 

[timjones]

Y'all are also missing the piont that the government will "only use time provin electronic equpment of at least five years experiance" so it realy leaves few choices. There are also quite a few other requierments that must be acounted for at time of bidding. The good news is the govenment has droped computer equpment time reqirements to two years, so the jsf and 18 e/f to name some have much more modern electronics. as the b-2 is a 10 year old plane with now 15 year old computers a 386 was top of the food chain then. y'all dont want to know whats in the old stuff like an e-2