A Franco-American cooperative design of VAMP avionics modules

A cooperative program has been undertaken since 1989 between Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Dassault Electronique, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed upon by USAF and DGA (French DoD). This joint effort has been carried out under the VHSIC Avionics Modular Processor (VAMP) program. The goal was the development of three advanced avionic modules for the French DoD´s and USAF´s programs: PMF, a 32-bit military processor originally developed for different uses (Avionics, Navy, Army); NVM module, non-volatile memory (8 mbytes EEPROM); HSDB module, bus interface unit for the High Speed Data Bus (Referring to the AS 4074 Linear Token Passing Bus (LTPB) standard). This effort aims at establishing a high degree of interoperability for future NATO systems. These modules were designed under an equally balanced program in which studies and development were to be shared. The paper outlines the key technical issues in the development of each of these modules. It shows also how these modules are integrated and used in the Wright Laboratory Integrated Test Bed and what could be an associated future development