Application of Space Station Freedom (SSF) DMS technology to fault tolerant avionics systems

The Space Station Freedom (SSF) is developing a space-qualified Data Management System (DMS) packaged with standard modules and backplanes as well as Ada software capabilities. The SSF architecture must be augmented with tight processor synchronization and cross-strapped input/output capabilities to implement N-modular redundant (NMR) system voting. There are many architectural variations available to implement NMR. A fault-tolerant testbed (FTTB) is being used at IBM to evaluate which architectures have the least impact on the SSF technology base. Developments in the FTTB thus far support the conclusion that the SSF technology can be a cost-effective point of departure for implementation of future fault-tolerance avionics architectures since it offers a standard hardware and software base