Engineers at the Boeing Co. in St. Louis needed a memory subsystem for the Tactical Aircraft Moving Map Capability (TAMMAC) system. They found their answer with the Advanced Memory Unit (AMU), a Flash EPROM-based data transfer and recording system from Smiths Industries Aerospace in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The TAMMAC system, which scientists at the U.S. Navy and Boeing developed, will go on most U.S. Navy fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. The system consists of two subsystems: the Smiths system and the Digital Map System from Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Fla.
The AMU is an inexpensive commercial-off-the shelf component that is small enough to be removed easily from the aircraft, says Ervin Pagel, TAMMAC project engineer at Boeing. The device uses a PowerPC 603e processor with Ada software. It also has a memory capacity of 85 megabytes compared to one megabyte for the previous system.
The Smiths device operates on a standard aircraft MIL-STD-1553B communications bus and a High Speed Interface Bus over which the AMU and the Digital Map System will communicate.
The AMU introduces new portable PC Card (credit card size) memory media, two of which are used within the device. The PC cards will also interface with the U.S. Navy`s Tactical Aircraft Mission Planning System. The AMU is designed to replace earlier U.S. Navy Data Storage Set and Mission Data Loader equipment, and fit into the same installation envelope. - J.M.
For more information contact Jennifer Villarreal at Smiths by phone at 616- 241-8643, by fax at 616-241-7318, by mail at 4141 Eastern Ave., S.E., Grand Rapids, Mich., 49518-8727, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.smithsind-aerospace.co.uk/.
