Linux on Missiles?
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It's gotta be better than the garbage produced by Northrop for managing the IMU in Peacekeeper. Hell, they couldn't even get ATLAS right! Can you imagine running missile tests using Windows? Believe me, when the job requires real-time management of flight control systems, you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show. That's just asking for test birds landing in downtown Encino. They might not be carrying a payload of HE, but they still pack a lot of kinetic energy, and it could ruin the day for a lot of rent-controlled living valley girls on the first BSOD. Linux is a bitch to use for those of us spoiled by the Fisher-Price interface of Windows, but it's rock solid in performance and very reliable. For certain applications it's hard to beat, and this sounds like one of them. The right tool for the job is the rule here, and I think it was a good choice for the price. I wish we'd something as good to select when I was in the missile racket. "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
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it will say Bad target name. Press F1 to continue .:-D ------------------------------ Its not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end.
You cannot recover from a BSOD. :-D Cheers, Vikram.
"When I read in books about a "base class", I figured this was the class that was at the bottom of the inheritence tree. It's the "base", right? Like the base of a pyramid." - Marc Clifton.
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inphone wrote:
RedHawk Linux[^] selected for Lockheed Martin for missile testing
Actually, it is not all that bad. Remember a missile is in a dedicated and very localized environment with specific hardware (that almost never changes) attached. It is extremely embedded with minimal changes over time. It's not like a missile has a wifi connection to the internet streaming music from iTunes and downloading updates as it flies. So most OS's are extremely stable in a very tightly closed environment. You would rather they make their own OS still? _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
very localized environment with specific hardware (that almost never changes)
Well, at least once :rolleyes: The tigress is here :-D
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Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
very localized environment with specific hardware (that almost never changes)
Well, at least once :rolleyes: The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote:
Well, at least once
This is THAAD we're talking about.... Though hopefully they have fixed their seeker problem, THAAD missed 9 out of 10 times. ;P Maybe that is why they are changing the OS.... They were getting BSOD.... _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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It's gotta be better than the garbage produced by Northrop for managing the IMU in Peacekeeper. Hell, they couldn't even get ATLAS right! Can you imagine running missile tests using Windows? Believe me, when the job requires real-time management of flight control systems, you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show. That's just asking for test birds landing in downtown Encino. They might not be carrying a payload of HE, but they still pack a lot of kinetic energy, and it could ruin the day for a lot of rent-controlled living valley girls on the first BSOD. Linux is a bitch to use for those of us spoiled by the Fisher-Price interface of Windows, but it's rock solid in performance and very reliable. For certain applications it's hard to beat, and this sounds like one of them. The right tool for the job is the rule here, and I think it was a good choice for the price. I wish we'd something as good to select when I was in the missile racket. "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
Roger Wright wrote:
and it could ruin the day for a lot of rent-controlled living valley girls on the first BSOD.
Would definately redefine Blue Screen Of Death. While I'm not a *nix fan I agree that when it comes to stuff like missiles, Linux is a lot better than other things.
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on. If you tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe, he'll believe you. But if you tell him a bench has just been painted, he'll have to touch it to be sure.
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It's gotta be better than the garbage produced by Northrop for managing the IMU in Peacekeeper. Hell, they couldn't even get ATLAS right! Can you imagine running missile tests using Windows? Believe me, when the job requires real-time management of flight control systems, you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show. That's just asking for test birds landing in downtown Encino. They might not be carrying a payload of HE, but they still pack a lot of kinetic energy, and it could ruin the day for a lot of rent-controlled living valley girls on the first BSOD. Linux is a bitch to use for those of us spoiled by the Fisher-Price interface of Windows, but it's rock solid in performance and very reliable. For certain applications it's hard to beat, and this sounds like one of them. The right tool for the job is the rule here, and I think it was a good choice for the price. I wish we'd something as good to select when I was in the missile racket. "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
Roger Wright wrote:
you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show.
Er, isn't Linux a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (with bugs)? It certainly isn't a rate monotonic real time operating system. I believe they were using for simulation, not flight control. More suitable OSS for that kind of thing would probably be RTEMS[^]. Worked on an "electronic nose" system based on it a fair few years ago. (Grandmother, suck eggs, but coudln't resist) Ryan
O fools, awake! The rites you sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old, Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness—and their law is dust. al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
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Roger Wright wrote:
you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show.
Er, isn't Linux a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (with bugs)? It certainly isn't a rate monotonic real time operating system. I believe they were using for simulation, not flight control. More suitable OSS for that kind of thing would probably be RTEMS[^]. Worked on an "electronic nose" system based on it a fair few years ago. (Grandmother, suck eggs, but coudln't resist) Ryan
O fools, awake! The rites you sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old, Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness—and their law is dust. al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
What would happen if you used a pre-emptive OS in a missile system that could be used in a pre-emptive strike? Would the missile blast off without any consideration of the political/military climate at the time, as it thought it could get a strike in before the other side had even thought there was a problem? I still remember having to write your own code in FORTRAN rather than be a cut and paste merchant being pampered by colour coded Intellisense - ahh proper programming - those were the days :) -- modified at 9:13 Tuesday 29th November, 2005
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What would happen if you used a pre-emptive OS in a missile system that could be used in a pre-emptive strike? Would the missile blast off without any consideration of the political/military climate at the time, as it thought it could get a strike in before the other side had even thought there was a problem? I still remember having to write your own code in FORTRAN rather than be a cut and paste merchant being pampered by colour coded Intellisense - ahh proper programming - those were the days :) -- modified at 9:13 Tuesday 29th November, 2005
I think that would be precognitive sheduling. Would be revolutionary. Maybe we should start a working group. Now I'm sounding like my schizophrenic ex boss. Ryan
O fools, awake! The rites you sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old, Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness—and their law is dust. al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
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Roger Wright wrote:
and it could ruin the day for a lot of rent-controlled living valley girls on the first BSOD.
Would definately redefine Blue Screen Of Death. While I'm not a *nix fan I agree that when it comes to stuff like missiles, Linux is a lot better than other things.
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on. If you tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe, he'll believe you. But if you tell him a bench has just been painted, he'll have to touch it to be sure.
launching missles, firing Artilleries, Dropping bombs and many more can be done with Windows XP operating system, but you should also have a joystick attached and a nice graphics card.
"But your mind is very complex, very tricky. It makes simple things complicated. -- that's its work. And for centuries it has been trained for only one thing: to make things so complicated that your life becomes impossible."- Osho
--[V]--
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Roger Wright wrote:
you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show.
Er, isn't Linux a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (with bugs)? It certainly isn't a rate monotonic real time operating system. I believe they were using for simulation, not flight control. More suitable OSS for that kind of thing would probably be RTEMS[^]. Worked on an "electronic nose" system based on it a fair few years ago. (Grandmother, suck eggs, but coudln't resist) Ryan
O fools, awake! The rites you sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old, Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness—and their law is dust. al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
Ryan Roberts wrote:
Er, isn't Linux a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (with bugs)? It certainly isn't a rate monotonic real time operating system.
RedHawk Linux, not RedHat. I have not measured the OS, we don't have a copy yet, though I am considering it now. There are several ways to increase determinism on an OS. Minimize its interruptions is one. If you can guarentee that windows receives one interrupt at a time and never receives an over-lapping interrupt, you remove it from a network, minimize processes, and run a processor 10x faster than you need, it is extremely deterministic (otherwise known as soft-real-time). However the best way is to replace a core kernel with a deterministic one (hard-real-time).
Concurrent Computer Corporation's RedHawk™ Linux® is an industry-standard, POSIX-compliant, real-time version of the open source Linux operating system. RedHawk Linux, compatible with the popular Red Hat® Linux distribution, provides high I/O throughput, guaranteed fast response to external events, and optimized interprocess communication. RedHawk is the ideal Linux environment for the complex real-time applications found in simulation, data acquisition, and industrial systems control. RedHawk Linux user-level commands, utilities and system administration are standard Red Hat. **RedHawk achieves real-time performance by replacing the Red Hat kernel with a multithreaded, fully-preemptable kernel with low-latency enhancements. RedHawk's true symmetric multiprocessing support includes load-balancing and CPU shielding to maximize determinism and real-time performance in mission-critical solutions.**_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -
RedHawk Linux[^] selected for Lockheed Martin for missile testing X|
Make sure you emphasize "Testing". Linux is not being used as part of the missile guidance system itself; a true real-time operating system will be used there. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Make sure you emphasize "Testing". Linux is not being used as part of the missile guidance system itself; a true real-time operating system will be used there. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
Make sure you emphasize "Testing". Linux is not being used as part of the missile guidance system itself; a true real-time operating system will be used there.
Actually, both have to be real-time. Red-Hawk Linux does claim real-time kernal capability, but it will supply the environment for HIL testing (according to the article), meaning it will play the "entire world" while the missile just has to play "itself." HIL testing is nothing to sneeze at, it is perhaps one of the most complicated and most real-time required operations there is in the testing community. I would suggest a good google on the subject. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Trollslayer wrote:
Well, at least once
This is THAAD we're talking about.... Though hopefully they have fixed their seeker problem, THAAD missed 9 out of 10 times. ;P Maybe that is why they are changing the OS.... They were getting BSOD.... _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Trollslayer wrote:
Well, at least once
This is THAAD we're talking about.... Though hopefully they have fixed their seeker problem, THAAD missed 9 out of 10 times. ;P Maybe that is why they are changing the OS.... They were getting BSOD.... _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Roger Wright wrote:
you don't want a buggy, pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system running the show.
Er, isn't Linux a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (with bugs)? It certainly isn't a rate monotonic real time operating system. I believe they were using for simulation, not flight control. More suitable OSS for that kind of thing would probably be RTEMS[^]. Worked on an "electronic nose" system based on it a fair few years ago. (Grandmother, suck eggs, but coudln't resist) Ryan
O fools, awake! The rites you sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old, Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness—and their law is dust. al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
Any single-tasking RTOS would be more reliable, probably, but if I'm not mistaken you can fairly easily set execution priorities in Linux that are much harder to enforce in Windows. I'm sure there are better choices out there, but for the price, Linux seems to be a good selection over Windows. BTW - If Grandpa could still deliver, Grandmother wouldn't need eggs...;) "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
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Joe Woodbury wrote:
Make sure you emphasize "Testing". Linux is not being used as part of the missile guidance system itself; a true real-time operating system will be used there.
Actually, both have to be real-time. Red-Hawk Linux does claim real-time kernal capability, but it will supply the environment for HIL testing (according to the article), meaning it will play the "entire world" while the missile just has to play "itself." HIL testing is nothing to sneeze at, it is perhaps one of the most complicated and most real-time required operations there is in the testing community. I would suggest a good google on the subject. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
HIL testing is nothing to sneeze at
How well I know! I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but the meaning is clear from context. I used to call it KUS - "Known Universe Simulation" - when I was designing test systems for guided missiles. The DoD doesn't trust new-fangled techniques like in-circuit component testing (new, as in 20 years old), and wants the ATE to simulate the environment surrounding the UUT in real time. I maintain, and research supports me, that if a circuit is designed correctly and assembled correctly using good parts, it will work exactly as designed. If it doesn't, the design is flawed. But at whatever level of integration I was asked to test, I had to design and build hardware that exactly duplicated the electrical environment of the next assembly level, and program it to emulate every possible response. Even after proving that in-circuit tests actually were better than the KUS approach, catching more errors than the traditional method, catching flaws at lower levels of assembly, I was still required to build and program equipment to simulate the known universe for final sell-off. That requirement turns a $200,000 piece of ATE into a $5 million hardware. DoD is a dinosaur... "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9