Electronics designers at the Hughes Aircraft Co. Naval and Maritime Systems unit in Fullerton, Calif., needed a powerful graphic display generator for a radar system aboard U.S. Coast Guard surface ships. They found their solution in the IVS4000 graphics controller from BARCO Inc. Chromatics Division in Tucker, Ga.
"We chose this product because we needed a high-performance graphic display generator," says Al Hoblit, tech-nical director of display techno-logy at Hughes Naval and Maritime. Barco "was good in price, could meet our schedule and production requirements, and we found them very easy to work with."
Hughes engineers are using the IVS4000 6U VME controller on the Surface Search Radar System aboard the Coast Guard Hamilton-class (WHEC-378) high-endurance cutters and Island-class (WPB-110) patrol boats. The board supports X-Windows and downloads display graphical information in real time to display multiple tracked targets moving at high rates of speed.
"The IVS card does most of the graphic rendering for you so you can offload from the main processors," Hoblit says. "You gain bandwidth, capacity, and many things when you can do that. Most lower-end systems don`t have that capability."
Hoblit says he considered buying graphics controllers from Metheus Corp. of Beaverton, Ore., Megatek Corp. of San Diego, and Tech-Source Inc. of Altamonte Springs, Fla., but settled on the BARCO controller for its combination of price and performance. - J.K.
For more information on the IVS4000 graphics controller, contact Peggy Grimm at BARCO by phone at 770-492-5105, by fax at 770-492-5111, by e-mail at peggy. [email protected], or by mail at 2558 Mountain Industrial Blvd., Tucker, Ga. 30084.
