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Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

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Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#111

Post by seanc »

ohadron wrote: post #23

Even assuming quadruple redundancy, seven nines uptime and resilience to extreme conditions and cosmic rays, this looks way way bigger than it should be. One explanation could be that the certification process for anything aviation related is so expensive and slow that we're actually looking at tech from 15+ years ago.

I work in telecommunications, back in the 90's fibre optic transport for plain old telephone service. Think back to how reliable your phone was before VOIP.

Then we hired a guy from an Aerospace company and he thought we were a bunch of reckless cowboys who didn't care a thing about quality.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#112

Post by mastax »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #16
l33tman wrote: post #14

Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-5 (!) seconds after every interaction. My... god.... I kind of almost heard the mechanical drive seeking and reading and searching the heavily fragmented map data...

Probably because it is 10 year old older hardware but thoroughly tested. Using Chrome/JS/CSS on the latest Ryzen might be neat but when you need to transport 300 passengers daily around there is other sort of concerns then taking up 3 folks to the ISS every 6 months.

In an emergency situation, an unresponsive and unintuitive GUI may be very dangerous. Especially if pilots forget how to use it because they're using the iPad day to day but right now it's rebooting to install an update.

Like, I get the argument for certification but maybe the requirements should have a minimum level of performance. If that's not possible maybe we should find a different equilibrium.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#113

Post by Symbiote »

aivisol wrote: post #85
p_l wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need very good contacts inside an airline. Personal contacts with captain and the like. Sometimes you still can get jump seat flights (a rather uncomfortable seat used for ferrying extra crew) in the cockpit.

I very much hope that is not the case. As a passenger I would not be very happy seeing pilot's friends going in and out of cockpit during the flight.

Pre-2001, it wasn't unusual for children to be shown into the cockpit during the flight. (Although, prices were higher back then, so it was less common for children to fly anyway.)

I saw the cockpit of an American Airlines plane when I was about 11 years old, and disappointed the captain when I was confused by his American humour.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#114

Post by xnyan »

paavohtl wrote: post #67
qayxc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we don't know anything about the internals, it's safe to say the goal was "good enough and certified" vs. "snappy but no guarantees it works correctly 100% of the time". This is an airplane after all, not a consumer-grade gadget.

They might have different standards and I'm not a pilot, but in my opinion having multiple seconds of UI lag in vitally important interfaces is not good enough nor deserves certification.

The safety record for commercial airlines is extremely good per mile traveled as compared to pretty much any other form of powered transportation. At some level I share your concerns about UI lag, but it would seem not to negatively affect safety of flights in any detectable way.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#115

Post by fatnoah »

brunooo wrote: post #95
l33tman wrote: post #14

Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-5 (!) seconds after every interaction. My... god.... I kind of almost heard the mechanical drive seeking and reading and searching the heavily fragmented map data...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements, and Wind River has a lot of documentation around VxWorks, which is actually quite modern supporting Rust etc. The issue is that even a slight overlap with other cockpit functions puts you in a much stricter regime, and thus a simple modern map rendering framework doesn’t work, because its components and dependen…

>Wind River has a lot of documentation around VxWorks, which is actually quite modern supporting Rust etc.

Wow. I remember spending 3 weeks in Alameda CA to get trained and certified on VxWorks for a project...in 1999!

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#116

Post by spyder »

qayxc wrote: post #54
hliyan wrote: post #39

I always worry around this type of mess-of-wires setups, especially if it's in cramped space where an errant elbow can dislodge something. Shouldn't there be covers on these things?

First of all this place isn't meant to be occupied by people on a regular basis. Other than for safety inspections, maintenance and repairs, no one is supposed to be in there, especially not during flight. Secondly, covers would introduce a lot of problems: additional weight, additional points of failure (e.g. damaging wires if broken/loose somehow), the need to be fireproof and not emitting toxic smoke if getting ho…

Third: If something gets disconnected than the computer knows about it, and reports it.

Forth: It's probably not that easy to dislodge anything because in flight it has to survive more than an elbow.

Fifth: there are covers on the devices and cabels where they think it's necessary because of human movement, you can see it in the video here: https://youtu.be/241-5DZyons?t=152

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#118

Post by throwinthisaway »

jaywalk wrote: post #100
mavhc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-com...

It's never been proven (as far as I'm aware) that the guy was actually able to send commands to a real plane. It's no surprise that he was able to read data, because the seatback screens have to get the flight data they display from somewhere. But actually sending commands that will reach real systems is a pretty big leap.

Throwaway account to remain anonymous because these aren't nice words.

I worked with Chris Roberts for a period of time. Making things up to scare companies into dumping cash on him is kind of his 'thing'. I never once actually saw him perform any real exploits or produce anything of value except scary/funny looking powerpoints and lots of trash talk. In this case he just stepped a little bit too far with his made up scenario & nothing ever came of it.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#120

Post by alksjdalkj »

ohadron wrote: post #23

Even assuming quadruple redundancy, seven nines uptime and resilience to extreme conditions and cosmic rays, this looks way way bigger than it should be. One explanation could be that the certification process for anything aviation related is so expensive and slow that we're actually looking at tech from 15+ years ago.

Could be wrong but I think there's a lot of equipment for things like radios, radar, sensors, etc. that makes it look like there are more servers than there actually are.
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