Today, increasing demand for functionality in modern aircraft is driving a critical need for virtualized avionics systems that combine separate capabilities into a single ruggedized and compact computer.

The Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) seeks to ensure rapid upgrades and technology insertion, no vendor lock, and accommodation of existing standards.

In August 2021, Intel announced the new Intel Xeon W-11000E Series processor ­(formerly known as “Tiger Lake-H”), designed for the embedded market.

Backed by broad support from government and industry, the release of SOSA Technical Standard 1.0 promises a new era of open standards-based system integration with flexibility and interoperability as its hallmarks.

Some environmental constraints for deployed military computing systems are operational temperature, humidity, sand, dust, vibration, shock/basic, leakage (immersion), steam and water jet cleaning, rapid decompression, contamination by fluids (e.g. oil, fuel, cleaning), nuclear hardness, and input voltage.

What are the benefits of using a modular open systems approach to upgrade legacy military electronics systems?

Military-display designers continue to face stringent size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) constraints while integrating commercial innovations like HD – and soon 4K – into systems that must work with legacy sensors and interfaces while also complying with a variety of open architectures and standards.

Awards are in three tiers -- ranging from platinum, the highest, to the gold awards, and finally to the silver awards.