Re: CPU recommendations from an Ada perspective?

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <1e0ymjc.1fjcxni1os2v7cN@[192.168.0.5]>,
  swelter@mus.ch (Sascha Welter) wrote:
> Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>
> > I know of at least
> > one engine controller that was done for the navy using PC-based
> > hardware

> Please tell me that it wasn't the thing that did a divison-by-zero
> error and they had to haul the ship to the port to get it fixed... it
> could not believe this to happen if it was programmed in Ada.

Happily. It was not that system. That was done in C (Visual C++ I'd
wager) by our competitors. The demo I saw had it running on Win95,
but I don't know which OS they used on the ship. The mandate was in
force at the time, but they got around it by doing the development under
a R&D contract. I won't mention their name, but their initials are CAE.
:-)

Frankly I'm suprised their system lasted as long as it did. Our system
by contract had to pass rigorous shock and vibe tests, and they still
didn't trust it without a traditional backup system and a manual
workaround. I don't believe CAE had to do any of that.

When I first joined that group I was told about the seriousness of
causing a ship to need a tow. Apparently its a rather humiliating
experience for its captain. So in this group there was nothing (and I
mean NOTHING) more serious than a software problem that causes the ship
to go "dead in the water". Well, you can imagine the cruel glee around
our offices when that ship had to be towed. :-)

--
T.E.D.


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