Parallel Computing Using MIL-STD-1553

MIL-STD-1553 is a data communication standard that was first defined by US Air Force in 1973. Although MIL-STD-1553 is approaching its 40th birthday, it is still in use on the aircrafts of western air forces. As the computing elements on aircraft avionics proliferated in time, aircrafts became carriers that have a number of computing nodes. A significant number of these nodes are connected through the MIL-STD-1553 data bus. The motivation of the study described in this book is utilization of this computing base throughout the collaboration of the computing nodes on aircrafts. In the book, design and implementation of a parallel computing system, which utilizes the MIL-STD-1553 data bus as interconnection mechanism, is described. The management principles of the system and its message passing interface are narrated and performance of the system is demonstrated with example applications. This book is a re-edited copy (with a new section about the developments in MIL-STD-1553) of the MSc. thesis written by K. Burak Codur and supervised by Prof. Dr. Ay e Kiper. The thesis was completed at the Computer Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey in 2002.