GE Aviation, in collaboration with GE Intelligent Platforms, has launched a family of ‘versatile’ computing platforms for military and commercial aviation customers. The platform is “application ready” with open architecture components and provides standard digital avionics interfaces. Versatile computing platforms provide aircrafts with a common software environment to utilize the open system design to host a variety of vehicle and mission computing applications, according to GE.
Alan Caslavka (President, Avionics & Digital Systems, GE Aviation): In new aircraft development programs, we’ve seen over time that the cost to develop software has become increasingly prohibitive. We needed to find a way to reduce development time and cost for our customers.
The platform is capable of hosting applications such as Vehicle Management, Mission Payload and Sensor Management, Utility Management, Navigation and Guidance, Communication Management and Aerial Refueling, while providing a common software environment for the aircraft’s hosted applications.
The versatile computing platform includes software components necessary to support embedded avionics application software development. The components are designed to provide standard application program interfaces and a hardware abstraction layer, in order to isolate the impact of future hardware modifications to the customer’s application software, says GE. The versatile computing platform is being designed to host Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) conformant applications for future aircraft.
[Image courtesy: GE]