Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: news From: hoyme@src.honeywell.com (Ken Hoyme) Subject: Re: Airbus safety X-Submission-Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:16:27 GMT References: <1992Nov25.191925.27991@news.mentorg.com> Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Mpls. MN, USA. Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM X-Submission-Message-Id: Date: 16 Dec 92 14:00:45 PST In article Robert Dorsett writes: > The problem is that software is so much more easily changed than hardware, > that we could very well start an avionics equivalent of "creeping featurism." > Changing the way a stick behaves can be done in just one firmware update: no > need to develop new tooling, production techniques, train assemblers and > maintenance engineers, offer the retrofit during the next C check, etc. > Just the internal development process, which one can assume is faster and > cheaper than for hardware. But, by virtue of this ease, it's also more > *unstable* than hardware-based solutions. > Evidence to support this position? The A320 has about 4M of code. The A330/ > A340, 10M. It's happening as we speak... > Do any Honeywell people reading know how big the 777 EFCS is going to be? Well, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. I can only speak (and only in vauge terms, of course) about the portion of the 777 that Honeywell is producing. Honeywell's Airplane Information Management System (AIMS) contains the FMS function similar to previous generation airplanes, but does not encompass the autopilot (Rockwell Collins) nor the FBW Flight Controls (GEC). The FMS alone requires about 2Mbytes of executable code. It also requires a Nav Data Base and RAM for operation. I do not know the complexity of the other components of the "EFCS". Of course, Displays could be considered another part of the system. That function lives in AIMS on the 777.