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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

#51

Post by qayxc »

jeltz wrote: post #36
tibbydudeza wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is no excuse. It was possible to create almost instantly responsive UIs more than 20 years ago.

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.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#53

Post by notyou2 »

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...

This screen (Onboard Information System) is run from from a laptop that is behind the seat, that's not directly part of the aircraft systems

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#54

Post by qayxc »

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 hot, accessibility issues (covers need to be fixed and removeable), longer inspection times (need to remove covers before inspecting cables), etc.

In this particular environment, covers are unnecessary and introduce more problems than they solve; as mentioned above, no one is supposed to be in there during regular operation.

Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

#56

Post by ohadron »

lm28469 wrote: post #50
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.

This isn't Uber or Tesla, they don't move fast and break things here.

They sure do move fast - almost supersonic. But yes, they're really trying not to break things.
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