18 May 07. QinetiQ and Boeing collaborate to help MOD define MTDS needs. Front line aircrew are now contributing to the crucial experimental phase of the £7.8m/30 month UK Mission Training through Distributed Simulation – Capability Concept Demonstrator (MTDS – CCD) programme at RAF Waddington. Being delivered by QinetiQ, Boeing and other Team ACTIVE members, this experimental phase involves a series of events with front line aircrew, to explore the military utility of a comprehensive and realistic synthetic training environment for aircrew training. It shows how pilots and other forces can exercise simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic in the same multi aircraft combat scenarios, where the emphasis is on tactical operations not basic flying skills. These events are designed to prove that such a facility could be used for training, research purposes, technology assessment or equipment demonstration.
23 May 07. IBM, Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics will join forces to develop and manufacture chips using an advanced processing technology, the companies said on Wednesday. The alliance partners, also including Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG and privately owned U.S. Freescale
Semiconductor Inc., said in a statement they signed development agreements that include 32-nanometre process technologies. Jointly developing technologies and synchronizing manufacturing processes are growing trends in the industry and help chip makers cut costs and serve high-volume clients. International Business Machines Corp. is the world’s largest technology-services company and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is the biggest maker of memory chips. (Source: Reuters)
11 May 07. Joint Command, Microsoft team on R&D. The military’s U.S. Joint Forces Command said Wednesday that it will work with Microsoft Corp. to develop better information distribution techniques. The two parties will collaboratively look for ways to improve the command’s Knowledge and Information Fusion Exchange (KNiFE) expert systems program under a joint research and development agreement they reached recently, according to the two. The KNiFE knowledge-based expert system is a series of linked databases the U.S. military uses to provide soldiers in the field with lessons learned from previous engagements. Defense personnel also can tap into KNiFE’s databases from a secure Web site or by calling a staffed call center. The Joint Forces Command wants to improve the technologies it uses to find and deliver data and thinks Microsoft’s expertise in database technologies and software will help it develop better ways to search, extract and analyze data, said Joint Command officials. For its part, Microsoft hopes to pick up lessons that it will use to make improvements to its business intelligence software. (Source: GCN)