I/O computers at ELTA

The author discusses the ELTA Data Collection and Reduction System and also gives a short review of other applications using Aptec I/O computers. The DCRS is a tool for flight tests of modern radar systems, consisting of the airborne recording system (ARS) and the ground simulation and analysis station (SAS). The ARS is installed aboard an aircraft to record radar and instrumentation data in real time on an Ampex DCRSi cassette. The SAS reduces/analyzes the recorded data and injects the data into the radar´s programmable signal processor (PSP). The SAS uses a Micro VAX II computer and an Aptec IOC-24 with attached disks, array processors, graphic controller, and an ELTA fast data interchange (FDI) system connecting the DCRSi, the IOC, and the PSP. The IOC is also used to connect the PSP to a VAX, a graphics controller, and disks. The IOC makes the ELTA PSP into a superfast attached processor with the computation speed of up to 400 MOPS (millions of operations per second) and the I/O rate of up to 10 MB/s. This creates a VAX/VMS environment with the processing power of a supercomputer