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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

#151

Post by EricE »

seanc wrote: post #111
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.

The first time we had a VOIP system going into a new building in the mid 2000's I went into one of the closets and just disconnected one of the pairs of a fiber pair.

The IP redundancy didn't work :p I forget what the excuse was; my position is stuff happens and when I break random connections in redundant PBX systems they still work. Ugh.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#153

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

The use of iPads always surprises me. What happens if they run out of power? Do they bring a redundant iPad?

BTW, are you a pilot or in the airline industry?

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements

OT: People's faith in Wikipedia seems to be increasing on HN, which is odd for a sophisticated audience in the era of misinformation.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#154

Post by arp242 »

scrumper wrote: post #121
penguin_booze wrote: post #71

I always wondered: what would it take me to fly in the cockpit? I'm not a pilot, but I'm willing to be subjected to any amount of security/background check that'll let me witness the machine in action, end-to-end.

I spent a good chunk of my early 20s commuting across the Atlantic. Before 9/11, all you had to do was ask a flight attendant and they'd go check with the pilots and bring you up a short while later. I used to do it most flights overnight from New York, it broke up the journey which was otherwise pretty miserable in coach. I remember the pilots being delighted to have me up there, really for them it's as boring as it…

I only flew once before 9/11, I think I was already 12 or 13, and I don't think my mother even asked for me to go check out the cockpit – the crew asked if I wanted to see it before she had the chance. It was pretty neat.

These days, the scenes in Airplane! where passengers walk in and out of the cockpit are almost part of the joke.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#155

Post by SwiftyBug »

juancb wrote: post #134
tilolebo wrote: post #109

I wish I did not see this video. Knowing that the plane I'm flying in relies on an actual server room is super scary...

Just wait until you find out they run on software, some of it with bugs that they won’t fix. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04...

Link without Google AMP:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycl...

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#156

Post by dekhn »

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...

Yes, and the correct response is: of all the flights that have crashed and killed people in the last 10 years: was the slowness of the UI for flight operations the root cause?

The answer to that is: "almost certainly a very tiny one". Aviation computing, while externally quite boring, is exciting in the sense that tremendous effort is put into making a computing system that ensures a flight makes it from its source to its destination without killing people.

It's amazing how just a few accidents in the 50s, 60s, and 70s led to an unbelievable improvement in safety, consider that the IT systems are really constrained. Makes you wonder what you could do with a modern PC if you really tried.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#157

Post by dekhn »

wolverine876 wrote: post #153
brunooo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The use of iPads always surprises me. What happens if they run out of power? Do they bring a redundant iPad? BTW, are you a pilot or in the airline industry? > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements OT: People's faith in Wikipedia seems to be increasing on HN, which is odd for a sophisticated audience in the era of misinformation.

On a flight once I saw the person next to me was looking at topo maps on an ipad and we started a conversation. They were a pilot for United and said all the training and much of the data is on ipads, if one breaks you just get handed a new preloaded one, and it's not used for anything flight critical.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#158

Post by SwiftyBug »

momothereal wrote: post #119
cm2187 wrote: post #117

He shot that while in flight? I would be terrified of tripping over a wire and causing a major system to fail.

I think you can see that the shots in the server room were done on the tarmac

Also, it is very unlikely that there would even be a loose wire around where one could trip on.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#159

Post by brunooo »

wolverine876 wrote: post #153
brunooo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The use of iPads always surprises me. What happens if they run out of power? Do they bring a redundant iPad? BTW, are you a pilot or in the airline industry? > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements OT: People's faith in Wikipedia seems to be increasing on HN, which is odd for a sophisticated audience in the era of misinformation.

Non-airline pilot and generally curious, plus work on viability of new ground up stack for vehicle vs Garmin or Honeywell.

Rules for my own small GA plane flights if it’s in one without glass cockpit are: two fully charged devices with latest data on both (iPad and phone), flight plan on both (ForeFlight syncs automatically), plus two means of charging (larger Anker pack, and dashboard USB or 12V outlet).

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#160

Post by crakenzak »

mrweasel wrote: post #131
demarq wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spacex already disproved this myth have a look at the last manned mission they did. Glorious touch screen displays with all the bells and whistles.

Didn’ someone later confirm that there is in fact physical buttons below the touch screen, because you can’t actually use the touch screen with cloves on anyway.

the touch screens work with gloves they confirmed, the physical buttons are for backup.
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