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04 Apr 08. Latest cruise missile ready for action. The latest version of the Royal Navy’s Tomahawk land attack missile(TLAM) has been declared operational – three months earlier than planned. Used to arm submarines, the new Tomahawk Block IV missile is considerably more capable than its predecessors. It has a significantly reduced response time and can fly further, striking land targets from the sea up to one thousand miles away with even greater precision. They are able to re-target or safely abort in flight and can relay images en route. The missile was first successfully test fired from a Royal Navy submarine last June.
02 Apr 08. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing announced that it will support the new Xilinx Virtex®-5 FXT field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform with a range of rugged board level products. Curtiss-Wright is one of a select group of early access Xilinx customers to evaluate the newest platform of 65nm Virtex-5 FPGAs. The company is planning to use the Virtex-5 FXT platform for a range of new and existing product platforms in embedded military and aerospace multicomputing applications. Current Curtiss-Wright products featuring the Virtex-5 LXT and SXT components have been designed with the FXT in mind. FXT support on these products, and new designs using the FXT are expected to be available in the second half of 2008. Curtiss-Wright’s early adoption of Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs will not only introduce new capabilities into its existing product lines, but it opens the door to new applications due to the integration of high-performance GTX serial transceivers, large numbers of DSP48E slices, and embedded PowerPC® 440 processor on a single FPGA. The Virtex-5 FXT platform joins Curtiss-Wrights Virtex-5 LXT and SXT-FPGA based products in the deployment of heterogeneous systems along with digital signal processing (DSP) and general purpose processing elements in a range of commercial and rugged environments. The new FPGAs’ support for low-power serial connectivity, including a built-in PCI Express® block, will ease and speed the integration of such systems. Curtiss-Wrights FXtools and Serial RapidIO® endpoint IP provide a true common development environment across these FPGA components and platforms. Examples of target defense and aerospace applications for which the Virtex-5 FXT is ideal include demanding image and signal processing problems such as radar, signal intelligence, software defined radio, and real-time imaging.
27 Mar 08.SGL Kümpers, a joint venture between the SGL Group – The Carbon Company and F.A. Kümpers, has set a new benchmark on the way to realizing automated production of carbon fiber based, high-performance materials with commissioning of the new MAX5 multi-axial processing equipment at the company’s site in Lathen. The new MAX5 machine can process various widths of fabrics and, for the first time ever, makes it possible to manufacture customized multi-axial fabrics up to a maximum width of 130″ (330cm). First products from the new machine will be on show at the world’s largest composites trade fair, JEC Composites, in Paris in April. Franz-Jürgen Kümpers, managing director of SGL Kümpers: “The MAX5 represents a breakthrough in field of automated production of carbon fiber based composites and also a milestone on our successful innovation path. This unique machine enables us to make optimum use of the unparalleled material properties of carbon fiber multi-axial fabrics.
02 Apr 08. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing announced the results of recent performance testing for its CHAMP-AV6 VPX digital signal processor (DSP) engine. In the test, two quad FreeScale 8641 Power Architecture-based CHAMP-AV6s delivered a previously unachievable sustained intercard data rate of 8.68 GB/s, highlighting the performance advantages of Serial RapidIO (SRIO) over the new VPX bus architecture. Th