A flexible flight display research system using a ground-based interactive graphics terminal

Requirements and research areas for the air transportation system of the 1980 to 1990's were reviewed briefly to establish the need for a flexible flight display generation research tool. Specific display capabilities required by aeronautical researchers are listed and a conceptual system for providing these capabilities is described. The conceptual system uses a ground-based interactive graphics terminal driven by real-time radar and telemetry data to generate dynamic, experimental flight displays. These displays are scan converted to television format, processed, and transmitted to the cockpits of evaluation aircraft. The attendant advantages of a Flight Display Research System (FDRS) designed to employ this concept are presented. The detailed implementation of an FDRS is described. The basic characteristics of the interactive graphics terminal and supporting display electronic subsystems are presented and the resulting system capability is summarized. Finally, the system status and utilization are reviewed

SimpleSSD: Modeling Solid State Drives for Holistic System Simulation

Existing solid state drive (SSD) simulators unfortunately lack hardware and/or software architecture models. Consequently, they are far from capturing the critical features of contemporary SSD devices. More importantly, while the performance of modern systems that adopt SSDs can vary based on their numerous internal design parameters and storage-level configurations, a full system simulation with traditional SSD models often requires unreasonably long runtimes and excessive computational resources. In this work, we propose SimpleSSD, a highfidelity simulator that models all detailed characteristics of hardware and software, while simplifying the nondescript features of storage internals. In contrast to existing SSD simulators, SimpleSSD can easily be integrated into publicly-available full system simulators. In addition, it can accommodate a complete storage stack and evaluate the performance of SSDs along with diverse memory technologies and microarchitectures. Thus, it facilitates simulations that explore the full design space at different levels of system abstraction.Comment: This paper has been accepted at IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL

Improved multimedia server I/O subsystems

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.---- Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.The main function of a continuous media server is to concurrently stream data from storage to multiple clients over a network. The resulting streams will congest the host CPU bus, reducing access to the system's main memory, which degrades CPU performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways of improving I/O subsystems of continuous media sewers. Several improved I/O subsystem architectures are presented and their performances evaluated. The proposed architectures use an existing device, namely the Intel i960RP processor. The objective of using an I/O processor is to move the stream and its control from the host processor and the main memory. The ultimate aim is to identify the requirements for an integrated I/O subsystem for a high performance scalable media-on-demand server

Off-line processing of ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar data with high precision and high throughput

The first European remote sensing satellite ERS-1 will be launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1989. The expected lifetime is two to three years. The spacecraft sensors will primarily support ocean investigations and to a limited extent also land applications. Prime sensor is the Active Microwave Instrumentation (AMI) operating in C-Band either as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) or as Wave-Scatterometer and simultaneously as Wind-Scatterometer. In Europe there will be two distinct types of processing for ERS-1 SAR data, Fast Delivery Processing and Precision Processing. Fast Delivery Proceessing will be carried out at the ground stations and up to three Fast Delivery products per pass will be delivered to end users via satellite within three hours after data acquisition. Precision Processing will be carried out in delayed time and products will not be generated until several days or weeks after data acquisition. However, a wide range of products will be generated by several Processing and Archiving Facilities (PAF) in a joint effort coordinated by ESA. The German Remote Sensing Data Center (Deutsches Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum DFD) will develop and operate one of these facilities. The related activities include the acquisition, processing and evaluation of such data for scientific, public and commercial users. Based on this experience the German Remote Sensing Data Center is presently performing a Phase-B study regarding the development of a SAR processor for ERS-1. The conceptual design of this processing facility is briefly outlined

Automatic specification of reliability models for fault-tolerant computers

The calculation of reliability measures using Markov models is required for life-critical processor-memory-switch structures that have standby redundancy or that are subject to transient or intermittent faults or repair. The task of specifying these models is tedious and prone to human error because of the large number of states and transitions required in any reasonable system. Therefore, model specification is a major analysis bottleneck, and model verification is a major validation problem. The general unfamiliarity of computer architects with Markov modeling techniques further increases the necessity of automating the model specification. Automation requires a general system description language (SDL). For practicality, this SDL should also provide a high level of abstraction and be easy to learn and use. The first attempt to define and implement an SDL with those characteristics is presented. A program named Automated Reliability Modeling (ARM) was constructed as a research vehicle. The ARM program uses a graphical interface as its SDL, and it outputs a Markov reliability model specification formulated for direct use by programs that generate and evaluate the model

Status and projections of the NAS program

NASA's Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program has completed development of the initial operating configuration of the NAS Processing System Network (NPSN). This is the first milestone in the continuing and pathfinding effort to provide state-of-the-art supercomputing for aeronautics research and development. The NPSN, available to a nation-wide community of remote users, provides a uniform UNIX environment over a network of host computers ranging from the Cray-2 supercomputer to advanced scientific workstations. This system, coupled with a vendor-independent base of common user interface and network software, presents a new paradigm for supercomputing environments. Background leading to the NAS program, its programmatic goals and strategies, technical goals and objectives, and the development activities leading to the current NPSN configuration are presented. Program status, near-term plans, and plans for the next major milestone, the extended operating configuration, are also discussed

Carbon Dioxide Observational Platform System (CO-OPS), feasibility study

The Carbon Dioxide Observational Platform System (CO-OPS) is a near-space, geostationary, multi-user, unmanned microwave powered monitoring platform system. This systems engineering feasibility study addressed identified existing requirements such as: carbon dioxide observational data requirements, communications requirements, and eye-in-the-sky requirements of other groups like the Defense Department, the Forestry Service, and the Coast Guard. In addition, potential applications in: earth system science, space system sciences, and test and verification (satellite sensors and data management techniques) were considered. The eleven month effort is summarized. Past work and methods of gathering the required observational data were assessed and rough-order-of magnitude cost estimates have shown the CO-OPS system to be most cost effective (less than $30 million within a 10 year lifetime). It was also concluded that there are no technical, schedule, or obstacles that would prevent achieving the objectives of the total 5-year CO-OPS program

CLEAR: Communications Link Expert Assistance Resource

Communications Link Expert Assistance Resource (CLEAR) is a real time, fault diagnosis expert system for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Mission Operations Room (MOR). The CLEAR expert system is an operational prototype which assists the MOR operator/analyst by isolating and diagnosing faults in the spacecraft communication link with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) during periods of realtime data acquisition. The mission domain, user requirements, hardware configuration, expert system concept, tool selection, development approach, and system design were discussed. Development approach and system implementation are emphasized. Also discussed are system architecture, tool selection, operation, and future plans