Inbound From Trinidad and Tobago, joined Sep 2001, 838 posts, RR: 2 Posted (10 years 8 months 6 days 7 hours ago) and read 2546 times:
In the Civil Aviation Forum, there's a thread about Pilotless aircraft, and would you fly on them.
my question is, who designs the software that commands the present day aircraft?
I mean, there must be some software behind the FMS, Autopilot etc, and especially on an Airbus.
Just wondering if they are Microsoft based porgrams or not.
HAL From United States of America, joined Jan 2002, 2465 posts, RR: 53 Reply 1, posted (10 years 8 months 6 days 7 hours ago) and read 2525 times:
Most commercial software for automation etc, is made specifically for the user and equipment. For instance the Honeywell FMS we used on the DC-10 had the software written by Honeywell. Microsoft specializes in software for common home and business use, so no, none of the aircraft software is made by (or based on) Microsoft code. There are many small companies whose sole purpose in life is writing the software for this sort of application. Microsoft is best known because of their dominance in the home PC market, but they don't do the small work you are asking about.
HAL
One smooth landing is skill. Two in a row is luck. Three in a row and someone is lying.
FredT From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2002, 2184 posts, RR: 26 Reply 2, posted (10 years 8 months 6 days 6 hours ago) and read 2512 times:
Do a web search for "real time" and "safety critical" programming/applications(*).
Ideally, you'll have three different companies writing code to the same specifications for three on-board systems. That way, if there's a bug there will probably be two other agreeing systems catching it.
Cheers,
Fred
*) Those two terms are the opposites of the cr*p that gets put out by a certain software company in Redmond, IMNSHO.
I thought I was doing good trying to avoid those airport hotels... and look at me now.
Indian_flyboy From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 3, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 22 hours ago) and read 2483 times:
HAL is right , I worked for Honeywell for about 2 yrs , former AlliedSignal employee , the software for the entire suite of Honeywell avionics is written by Honeywell itself . You have to understand though that unlike computer software the s/w used by these devices are hardcoded , in the sense that they are on chips in whatever device is being used.
PPGMD From United States of America, joined Sep 2001, 2453 posts, RR: 0 Reply 4, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 22 hours ago) and read 2476 times:
FredT,
As a CS major and a database consultant (my "other job"), I have had little problems with MS products since the introduction of Windows 98 SE (except for the that steaming pile of junk Windows ME), its not just my postion. Many companies are choosing Win 2K and SQL server as the database enviroment of their choice for mid-sized applications. Obviousily they wouldn't choose it if it weren't relaible. In fact in the clustered enviroment they have a near 100% uptime.
Most people don't notice it because they are running the newest operating system which has to be able to do everything that the user wants. In order to program in these features and get it out quickly testing is often cut down quite a bit. But on the other hand in the server enviroment it takes quite a while for stuff to get released. In fact until Win 2K came out the NT enviroment lacked many of the neat features that home users had for years, but they weren't reliable enough at that point.
Many of the errors and crashes I see are caused by the user, even if they don't like to admit it. Playing Ultra Cool Game 3000 on your server might cause a crash.
Does MS have a place in aviation, no in the cockpit, not a single part in the cockpit does enough fuctions to nessitate a operating system.
*This message is probally disjointed, and has many spelling errors. As always everything presented here is IMHO.
FredT From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2002, 2184 posts, RR: 26 Reply 6, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 2457 times:
While it might be stable enough to run your company SQL server, it still is rare to see uptimes spanning weeks, months and years. It happens, when the computer is well hidden from all users and happily chugging away at it's databases. However, as soon as you start using the system you'll end up having to reboot in my experience. Not good enough for a safety-critical application.
And real-time it most certainly is not, a lot of the time it just decides to go for a coffe or what not and you're left staring at a screen where not much is happening, wondering what it is doing and what it will do next if and when it does something...
Admittet, the stability has gone up a lot. It is still lightyears away from what you achieve with a "real" server OS though.
BTW, whatever is in the avionics pretty much has to be up-to-date enough to do what the user wants... You can't go the route of putting out billions of beta versions in every Cessna and Piper and then cut away the parts which caused problems there when you load up your jetliner with avionics software...
Cheers,
Fred
I thought I was doing good trying to avoid those airport hotels... and look at me now.
PPGMD From United States of America, joined Sep 2001, 2453 posts, RR: 0 Reply 7, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 2461 times:
Fred,
"Real" server OS, I will admit that SQL and Win 2K don't have the uptime (in the long term) of SAP and the like, but SAP costs drasticlly more and is not nearly as scalable. But Win 2K is extremely close (the diffrence is often in a tenth of a precent).
About running none stop, what airplane runs for years without a shut down? I know that every GPS that I have ever used goes though some form of start up time. The procedures that I most often see for SQL servers (the procedures vary from company to company this is the one that I recommend) has the server rebooting 4 am EST (1am PST) on a Sunday or such. Net planned downtime about 5 mins max, that down time is the same for a single sever enviroment or for a cluster database enviroment.
Betas: Of course you should never see that ever, not in the software industry, not in aviation. Betas confuse people and gets software out that is not tested fully. Most companies have a policy agianst betas in a production enviroment.
Safety Critical: "as soon as you start using the system" Bingo thats the problem too few IT managers ever lock up the systems. No user should ever be allowed to install anything on any computer installed on the company network ever. If you let the user start installing stuff and do stuff that it was never meant to do it might crash. I will tell you that 90% of crashes is caused by someone doing something stupid.
Using a reliable backend(Server/Network software, and background OS), and using a reliable front end (GUI and software presented to the user), lock the system out (no unauthorized programs or input), and montior the users input (try to catch it when the user inputs something totally absurd) you will have nearly 100% uptime.
If we let just anything run on the system (be it a PC, GPS, or FMS) then it would crash. The problem is that few people have this attitude in the IT departments. Everyone complains about how stupid the user is, but few have the gonads to propose a total lock down of the systems. Most feel that the user should be able to "customize their systems." Avionics folks have the advantage that once it pass FAA certification it can't be touched so they don't have to worry about open systems.
Realtime: No computers are ever realtime (they would need to predict what you are going to do next to do that), there is only so much bandwidth in the system, at any particular time one part of the bandwidth is totally taken up. Wether that is the sytem bus, PCI, RAM, etc. Now avionics are extremely lucky they only do some many things and they really don't take that much computing power, so they are able to seem real time.
Now not knowing what is happening that seems more like a user problem to me than a computer problem in most cases.
L-188:
As much as I defend MS, if I ever walked into the cockpit and saw the Windows Logos on the CRTs, I would walk out and never fly that airplane again.
My brain is starting to hurt. Probally my longest post yet.
*The usual all facts here are stated IMHO. Don't like it? I don't care!
Admiral Ackbar From Canada, joined May 2002, 159 posts, RR: 0 Reply 8, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 14 hours ago) and read 2438 times:
"Real" server OS, I will admit that SQL and Win 2K don't have the uptime (in the long term) of SAP and the like, but SAP costs drasticlly more and is not nearly as scalable. But Win 2K is extremely close (the diffrence is often in a tenth of a precent).
PPGMD, I think you meant something else than SAP, which is not an OS, but an ERP package. Maybe you meant Unix/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/AIX/etc. as more reliable OS`?
FredT From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2002, 2184 posts, RR: 26 Reply 10, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 9 hours ago) and read 2393 times:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're happy with your locked up MS servers. Using is a different thing than installing software or configuring the system, BTW. I'm not too thrilled about them.
Nobody cares what I think. Nobody cares what you think, and I side with Nobody. So I'm out of this.
I got out of computers and began playing with aircraft in part to get out of that mess. Won't get drawn in again.
Cheers,
Fred
I thought I was doing good trying to avoid those airport hotels... and look at me now.
PPGMD From United States of America, joined Sep 2001, 2453 posts, RR: 0 Reply 11, posted (10 years 8 months 5 days 8 hours ago) and read 2385 times:
"BTW. I'm not too thrilled about them." Exactly users hate it when the computers are locked up and they are only allowed to use applications that directly relate to their jobs. But its effective measure that increases network security and stops many of the crashes before they are allowed to stop.
Its just a diffrence in postion, I come from the ahole IT person background, my job is to get things done. I do that by whatever means nessary. I do have the advantage because I am a consultant, I do my job and get out, I don't have to deal with the users that often.
Don't get me wrong I am a friendily person its just my computer polcies pi$$ people off and I don't care.
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