Shared-memory networks: description, history, and candidate as a future avionics architecture

Avionics architectures have evolved significantly during the last 20 years, keeping pace with new technologies and attempting to provide the required speed and bandwidth interconnectivity between the various sensors, processors, and other nodes throughout an aircraft. Replicated shared-memory networking (SMN) offers an elegant solution to the real-time, computer-to-computer communications problem required in avionics simulation, monitoring, and testing systems. A SMN reduces multiple-computer systems to one virtual computer, diminishing system development and maintenance costs. It features both system-level architectural simplicity and ultra-fast data communications. Suited to problems requiring more than one computer, it offers data transfer at the speed of light. This paper describes the technology and history of shared memory networks as traditionally used in real-time simulation, testing, and computational applications, and proposes the use of shared memory networks as an advanced avionics architecture of the future