FEATURE/Ada Ports Realtime C&C System to MS Windows NT and Pentium.Business Editors & Technology Writers FEATURE... LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 2002 One of the promises of the Ada programming language is portability. Yet managers of legacy code in Ada, as well as in Fortran or SmallTalk, often assume that changing a system's hardware means entirely redesigning the software in a new buzzword A term that refers to the latest technology or a term that sounds catchy. If not a flash in the pan, new technologies become mainstream. For example, Java was a hot buzzword in the 1990s, but should remain a major topic for decades. language. In software manager George Holt's experience, porting Ada code to the latest architectures is not only reasonable technologically and financially, but can be done rapidly. This is true even when the latest technology is the humble PC loaded with the operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. and software that everyone uses. His team's work resulted in the first tactical command The authority delegated to a commander to assign tasks to forces under his command for the accomplishment of the mission assigned by higher authority. and control weapon being run on a PC. Now president of AdaRose, Inc., Holt was a software manager for Mei Technology Corp. when the US Army asked that the Paladin Paladin archetypal gunman who leaves a calling card. [TV: Have Gun, Will Travel in Terrace, I, 341] See : Wild West Howitzer howitzer: see artillery. Artillery Vehicle be upgraded. In a matter of months his team put together a working prototype for PM Paladin at Picatinny Arsenal The Picatinny Arsenal (IPA: /ˈpɪkətɪni/ or /ˌpɪkəˈtɪni/ , NJ. They proved to the many skeptics among the Army's software managers that they could port the Ada83 code from a proprietary OS to Ada95 running on a PC's Pentium processor under Microsoft Windows See Windows. (operating system) Microsoft Windows - Microsoft's proprietary window system and user interface software released in 1985 to run on top of MS-DOS. Widely criticised for being too slow (hence "Windoze", "Microsloth Windows") on the machines available then. NT. The Paladin is an Army Artillery System mounted on a tracked vehicle (many civilians mistake it for a tank with a huge cannon). It fires 155mm (about 6.2 inch diameter) shells to a range of 30 kilometers. It has onboard navigational and automatic fire control systems, a four-man crew, and weighs approximately 62,000 lbs with a cruising range of 186 miles. Once awarded the contract, the team kept their approach to acquisitions, using commercial off-the-shelf technologies and open-system architecture designs. As a result, the M109A6 Paladin saved $27.5 million in production costs and reduced the computers' lifecycle costs by 75 percent. Use of the Ada programming language and strong modular programming techniques allowed the team, many of whom now work for AdaRose in Lexington, Mass., to rehost the legacy Ada software from the three-box distributed system to the new, one-box platform. Once coupled with the use of a Pentium processor and Windows NT, the team, in turn, exported the new software to similar U.S. military equipment, with minimal development costs. For the complete article, see http://www.adaic.org/news/adarose.html. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion