Military Embedded Systems Spring 2005 Volume 1 Number 1

Mil Tech Trends
MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS Resource Guide
Focus on systems,
switched fabrics
Q & A with Tom Quinly, President,
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
Most readers will recognize the company Curtiss-Wright because of its tie-in to the famous aviators who made airline
travel possible. But many may not know that Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC) is one of the largest
suppliers of embedded products and technology to the defense and aerospace market.
Tom Quinly is president of this division of the even larger Curtiss-Wright Corporation. Tom is no stranger to Commercial
Off-the-Shelf (COTS) or technology, having managed DSP and harsh-environment businesses before taking over the helm at
CWCEC. Tom gave us some time out of his busy schedule to provide his view from the top. – Ed.
MIL EMBEDDED: Tell us briefly about your company’s focus as
applied to the military.
QUINLY: CWCEC is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced
vendor for standards-based embedded computing solutions,
ranging from processing, data communication, DSP, radar,
video and graphics modules, to fully-integrated subsystems
where we manage the integration work beyond our customer’s
value-add expertise.
CWCEC and its legacy companies have delivered over 100,000
modules into the defense and aerospace market. In fact, we’ve
delivered over 10,000 modules for the Abrams Main Battle Tank
program alone. We deliver core building block solutions at the
level of integration that works best for our customers.
Along with technology, we also provide our Defense and
Aerospace (D&A) customers the additional services they require.
Since the critical retrofit market can’t always leverage COTS,
CWCEC offers custom variants of our standard products. Also,
our consistent product roadmaps support the spiral upgrades our
customers need. Our product life cycle services guarantee supply
and repair longevity after programs enter production, and our
dedicated obsolescence mitigation division manages customer
production programs.
MIL EMBEDDED: What’s new in the area of COTS and/or
military systems?
QUINLY: We’re at an exciting point of technology revolution.
Advancements in form factors, switched fabrics, and reconfigurable
computing are creating new paradigms and driving new
power/weight/performance densities. These trends align precisely
with demands for platforms, such as multiple Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), and Future
Combat System (FCS), that we address with the technologies and
expertise resident in the various CWCEC groups.
From a world perspective, conflicts such as the ongoing war in
Iraq impact our D&A customers, who in turn challenge us to provide
extended product support for platforms critical to our troops.
Success in this area results from our commitment to our customers
and our unmatched support for legacy products.
We also see increasing demand for US eyes-only program support.
Our strong US design, manufacturing, and support base
makes us well positioned to support this work.
Lastly, from a schedule perspective, our customers are pressed
to meet tougher schedule demands. This has led us to enhance
timely, on-site support for customers with demanding integration
challenges.
MIL EMBEDDED: What are the top three embedded
technologies you’re seeing in the market today?
QUINLY: While this is a dynamic time in our marketplace, today’s
top three answers are: First, PowerPC continues to dominate our
market, it’s unquestionably the default processor technology for
a wide range of computing applications ranging from traditional
SBCs to DSPs. We see demand for PowerPC in VME, 3U and
6U CompactPCI, Processor PMCs, in all ruggedization levels
and with all leading operating systems: We don’t see this trend
lessening.
Second, our customers want to leverage the competitive advantage
of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology in
complex systems, an area CWCEC has invested heavily in. Our
goal is to provide our customers with a positive “out of box”
FPGA technology experience that enables them to focus on their
area of expertise rather than “bits and bytes work”. We intend to
be the leading vendor in delivering this capability to our marketplace.
While FPGAs represent a cost and schedule programmatic
risk for customers they also offer a unique size/weight/cost/
power value proposition. Users of our CHAMP-FX FPGA boards
tell us that we’re delivering on this promise. We have powerful
examples: customers have reduced a shelf of cards to a one- or
two-slot solution. To mitigate risk, CWCEC provides significant
support, ranging from getting customers up and running to algorithm
development.
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