Re: Would You Fly an Airplane with a Linux-Based Control System?

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

Can you modify the text of the FAQ and send me the new version.

Thanks,
David Botton

On 2004-11-25 13:28:24 -0500, snarflemike@yahoo.com (Mike Silva) said:

> David Botton <david@botton.com> wrote in message 
> news:<2004112218292016807%david@bottoncom>...
>> For a real understanding of the Ariane 5 event, see the Ada FAQ:
>> 
>> http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=FAQ&CID=328
> 
> A small but, I think, important correction.  The hardware at the
> center of the failure was apparently built around the Motorola
> 68020/68881 chips, not the MIL-STD-1750.  The "Operand Error" that
> triggered the failure is a hardware exception generated by the FPU
> when, among other conditions, a float-to-integer conversion exceeds
> the capacity of the integer, exactly as occurred.  The reason this is
> important is because it shows that the exception was not generated by
> the Ada compiler code but by the hardware, and would therefore have
> occurred regardless of the programming language used.  If that's the
> case then the "it wouldn't have exploded if it were written in C"
> argument evaporates, unless they want to argue that the exception
> handler behavior would have been specified differently if the
> implementation language was C -- not likely!