Today's mainstream commercial microprocessors-raising the bar on performance for military and avionics designs

Abstract

With modern day avionics and weapons systems requiring a never-ending increase in performance, the military and aerospace industry must learn to adopt the latest microprocessor technology for these designs. Microprocessor performance level requirements which typically were at or below 50 MIPS in the avionics market are now exceeding the 50 MIP requirement. Only today's high-end microprocessors utilizing advanced design techniques for the PC, notebook, server and workstation markets can meet this performance requirement. To utilize today's microprocessors in the military and aerospace industries requires some modifications in silicon for power management and some additional peripheral integration. The highly competitive portable PC or notebook market is driving new proliferations of these high-end microprocessors providing the high-performance, low-power embedded processors ideal for the military and aerospace marketplace. Extended temperature and military offerings of these new generation products are emerging for these markets. The authors look at the current state of the military and aerospace marketplace. They explore today's high-end microprocessors and commercial markets that are driving the embedded processors suitable for the military and aerospace applications. Design trends to increase processor performance are discussed with a few words of caution for future high-end microprocessors.