Helicopter Simulator: Really Real-time Linux

Every now and then, you stumble across a software system that you never think about. Such is the case with a Linux-powered helicopter simulator being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. And no, you can't run it on your PlayStation 2.

The SH-60K Patrol Helicopter Team Trainer (PHTT) simulator will serve as a training platform for the new SH-60K patrol helicopter that Mitsubishi is building for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. The SH-60K will be carried onboarddestroyers and equipped to carry out missions ranging from anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare, to surveillance, transport, and rescue operations. Now how cool would it be to sit in that simulated cockpit for a while?

At the heart of the simulator is Concurrent's RedHawk implementation of real-time Linux and its iHawk high-performance PCI-based hardware platform for time-critical data acquisition, simulation, and industrial systems applications. iHawk symmetric multiprocessors (SMP) feature from one to eight Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron CPUs and up to 32 GB of memory. One factor which led Mitsubishi to settle on Concurrent was the requirement to capture RGB graphics at extremely high rates. RedHawk Linux guarantees that a user application can respond to an external event in less than 30 microseconds on a dedicated processor. RedHawk Linux is compatible with the Red Hat distribution.

Now the real question is: Will it be out for either XBox 360 or PlayStation 3 in time for Christmas?

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:13 AM  Permalink