COTS Communications Trends in Aerospace and Defense

The digitized battlefield relies on the same communications gear that powers the world's comms infrastructure: the Internet, cloud servers, cell phones, satellites, and increasingly handheld portable mobile Internet devices. While military-only protocols, data links, and "mysterious" secure channels are a given in today's deployed A&D systems, the fact is that most of the global information grid relies on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) civilian technology. From Google's Android mobile platform OS to 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and from ARM Cortex CPUs to Intel Core i7 processors, the technology we're all surrounded by and familiar with is also being designed into battlefield sensors, synthetic aperture radars, tactical operations centers, unmanned aerial systems, and satellites sporting space-borne Cisco routers.

About the Keynote Speaker

Chris A. Ciufo, Group Editorial Director, Military and Aerospace Group, OpenSystems Media

Chris Ciufo started his latest COTS-based technology publication called Military Embedded Systems magazine in 2005, published by OpenSystems Media (originally OpenSystems Publishing). He is responsible for OSM's Military and Aerospace group of magazines, which includes PC/104 & Small Form Factors, VME and Critical Systems, Military Embedded Systems, and the all-electronic publication dsp-fpga.com.

One of the conceptual founders and original authors of COTS Journal magazine published by The RTC Group, he later served as editor-in-chief of COTS Journal magazine, where he became widely recognized as one of the early proponents and commentators on the military's use of commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) technology.

Prior to leading COTS Journal, he held key management positions at industry-leading embedded systems companies including Dy4 Systems and VISTA Controls Corporation (both now a part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing), where he helped spearhead the industry's use of uprated COTS components when IC vendors abandoned MIL-SPEC devices. His technical career spans 26 years, having also held management positions in the semiconductor industry with Advanced Micro Devices, running the high-speed networking and TAXI product lines, and Sharp Microelectronics Technology, where he ran the DSP, SRAM, and ARM-based SoC businesses.

He continues his presence and participation in a wide variety of civilian and military organizations, including the PC/104 Consortium, the VME International Trade Association, and the military's AFCEA (Western Chapter).

He holds degrees in electrical engineering and in materials science and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis.

Exploiting Exponential Application Growth with Multi-core Compute Power

Supporting unmanned and manned vehicles with extremely complex and powerful systems is driving the demand to develop and deploy an exponentially growing number of applications on smaller systems at a rate unseen by the aerospace and defense industry. Multi-core processor platforms can solve many of these requirements, but the use of these systems is challenging and changes dramatically with multi-core platforms. This presentation will demonstrate how to take advantage of the industry's most advanced multi-core silicon in next-generation programs by using advanced tools and software components from Wind River.

About the Keynote Speaker

Tomas Evensen, Vice President and General Manager, Tools and Common Technologies Product Division, Chief Technology Officer, Wind River

Tomas Evensen is vice president and general manager of the Wind River tools product division and is chief technology officer. He joined Wind River as part of the acquisition of Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) in 2000. He was the vice president of engineering at Diab-SDS, which was acquired by ISI in 1996. He has more than 24 years of experience in the OS and embedded tools area. Prior to joining Wind River he was the creator of the Diab Data C/C++ compilers.

He received his MSEE at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Overview

Wind River and our key aerospace and defense partners are coming together in nine cities across North America to bring you the latest technology in the aerospace and defense industry. Each event consists of a full day of informative presentations including keynote sessions from industry luminaries and our Platinum sponsors, Freescale and Intel. Each partner will have a tabletop display to showcase their latest product demonstrations.

Why You Should Attend

• Learn the efficiencies of using the latest tools for designing and creating safety-critical software.
• Learn the benefits of using proven commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software platforms in critical programs.
• Learn how to reduce risk by using COTS DO-178B certification evidence in certified development processes.
• Stop by one of our partner sponsors to see a live demo of the integrated technology.
• Hear about the latest in multi-core technologies in presentations that include Intel and Freescale.

Who Should Attend

• Executive-level personnel who are interested in removing risk from their safety-certified systems
• Program managers, safety and security architects, and technical team leads designing critical systems
• Project managers needing to accelerate delivery of challenging embedded development operations
• Engineers and designers seeking to optimize the development of critical and certified software

Agenda

8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m.	Registration, Breakfast (Technology Pavilion)
9:00 a.m.–9:30 a.m.	Introduction
9:30 a.m.–10:15 a.m.	Industry Keynote: COTS Communications Trends in Aerospace and Defense
10:15 a.m.–10:45 a.m.	Break (Technology Pavilion)
10:45 a.m.–11:30 a.m.	A&D Trends and Power Architecture Response, Presented by Freescale View abstractHide abstract The demands of aerospace and defense applications have been driven by size, weight, and power (SWaP). The trends in this industry will be identified, and the ways Power Architecture meets the requirements of control and signal processing in trusted computing architecture will be addressed.
11:30 a.m.–12:15 p.m.	Accelerate the Transformation to Network-Centric Solutions, Presented by Intel View abstractHide abstract The network-centric operation concept involves the rapid and continuous implementation of new capabilities through spiral evolution. With 30 years of experience in embedded market segments, Intel provides commercial technology leadership to help aerospace and defense industry developers accelerate the transformation to network-centric solutions. Intel's intensive research-and-development effort drives the nonstop advances in commercial technology and development of new generations of processors that balance improvements in power, performance, functionality, and cost.
12:15 p.m.–1:30 p.m.	Lunch (Technology Pavilion)
1:30 p.m.–2:15 p.m.	Exploiting Exponential Application Growth with Multi-core Compute Power, Presented by Tomas Evensen, Wind River View abstractHide abstract Supporting unmanned and manned vehicles with extremely complex and powerful systems is driving the demand to develop and deploy an exponentially growing number of applications on smaller systems at a rate unseen by the aerospace and defense industry. Multi-core processor platforms can solve many of these requirements, but the use of these systems is challenging and changes dramatically with multi-core platforms. This presentation will demonstrate how to take advantage of the industry's most advanced multi-core silicon in next-generation programs by using advanced tools and software components from Wind River.
2:15p.m.–2:45 p.m.	Wind River Simics, Presented by Wind River
2:45 p.m.–3:30 p.m.	Securing Battlefield Computing and Communications, Presented by Wind River View abstractHide abstract The high connectivity of today's military devices creates a global challenge for protecting communication channels. Mixing these channels on shared compute platforms constrained by space, weight, and power (SWaP) increases complexity and forces a new level of rigor to robustly separate secure channels. This seminar details how Wind River's VxWorks and Linux platforms enable the creation of powerful single-level secure (SLS) and multilevel secure (MLS) systems with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms qualified against Common Criteria and Federal Information Processing Standards Publications (FIPS) standards.
3:30p.m.–4:00 p.m.	Closing, Drawing, and Technology Pavilion Open

Location

Sheraton Sunnyvale

1100 North Mathilda Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

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