F-22 Fun Facts

reply to post by Edrick


one of the specific advantages of the AN/APG-77 radar on the F-22 is the ability to pinpoint and prioritize targets from long distances, surely one can recognize the virtue of seeing your enemy first. but how does it do that? it seems that computers are quite adept at analyzing signal-to-noise, as shown by the hubble space telescope's deep field photo (where a shot was taken at a supposedly empty point among the stars only to have the photo show thousands of galaxies after the image was processed). in the F-22, those same computers analyzes the returns as it acquires and confirms the target.

i think using the kalashnikov in the comparison is unfair to the kalashnikov; for while the gun is a masterpiece, the planes are not. and the quaint plane that Edrick is proposing (w/o or with lesser computers, etc) would be like an ordinary telescopic sight, while the F-22 would be more akin to the hubble space telescope.

[edit on 11.10.09 by toreishi]

which `Cray` are they comparing it to? my sons nintendo DS is as `powerful` as a cray 1 - modern pc`s put out over 40 GFlops - about 130 x more powerful than the cray 1.


perspective please

you can buy a `Cray` for your home for $25,000 - powered by Intel Xeon`s.

[edit on 10/11/09 by Harlequin]

reply to post by Harlequin

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 1995--The first of a new generation, integrated processor that will serve as the ''brains'' of all the avionics for the F-22 Air Superiority Fighter, was delivered by Hughes Aircraft Co. to Westinghouse Electric Co. Wednesday.

...''Our design, based on more than 30 years of pioneering work in providing processors for the United States' front-line tactical aircraft, jams the equivalent of two Cray supercomputers into two packages that combined are only a little larger than a 20-inch portable color TV.

allbusiness.com

as the above quote was publicized circa 1995, then we might hazard the assumption that the people involved in the development of the F-22 CIP were comparing it to the Cray T3E which was launched late November 1995.

additional info from wiki

The radar's information is processed by two Raytheon Common Integrated Processor (CIP)s. Each CIP operates at 10.5 billion instructions per second and has 300 megabytes of memory. Information can be gathered from the radar and other onboard and offboard systems, filtered by the CIP, and offered in easy-to-digest ways on several cockpit displays, enabling the pilot to remain on top of complicated situations. The Raptor’s software is composed of over 1.7 million lines of code, most of which concerns processing data from the radar. The radar has an estimated range of 125-150 miles, though planned upgrades will allow a range of 250 miles (400 km) or more in narrow beams.[90] In 2007, tests carried out by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and L-3 Communications enabled the AESA system of a Raptor to act like a WiFi access point, able to transmit data at 548 Megabit/sec and receive at Gigabit speed; far faster than the current Link 16 system used by US and allied aircraft, which transfers data at just over 1 Megabit/sec.

F-22 Raptor

The T3E initially used the DEC Alpha 21164 (EV5) microprocessor and was designed to scale from 8 to 2,176 Processing Elements (PEs). Each PE had between 64 MB and 2 GB of DRAM and a 6-way interconnect router with a payload bandwidth of 480 MB/s in each direction. Unlike many other MPP systems, including the T3D, the T3E was fully self-hosted and ran the UNICOS/mk distributed operating system with a GigaRing I/O subsystem integrated into the torus for network, disk and tape I/O.

Cray T3E

[edit on 11.10.09 by toreishi]

Originally posted by Edrick
It's an Aircraft.

Having a Supercomputer on board is ridiculous.

IT is nearly impossible to actually have as much data going through the ships systems that would actually necessitate a multi Gflop CPU.

Seriously.

ITs completely unnecessary.

-Edrick

Well actually i watched a documentory for a new passanger aircraft like a 747, and these guy had a computer with something like an intel processor but were using 2 x nvidia discrete GPU's in sli so they can get some hardcore processing power for this airplane... And those GPU can so a lot more bloody processing than a cpu can... And we're talking high powered gpu's (this was when those nvidia 8800gtx's came out so like 128 stream processors putting out 518 G/Flops of processing power, each.) Hell now ATI's new radeon HD5870 has 2.78 teraflops of processing power...

[edit on 10-11-2009 by DaRAGE]

reply to post by Laxpla


i know this might sound like some tech bashing... but thats slower than i thought!

i thought all this new tech would be connected with fibre not cat5 ! thats suprised me!

reply to post by toreishi

i think using the kalashnikov in the comparison is unfair to the kalashnikov; for while the gun is a masterpiece, the planes are not.

I was merely making a metaphoric comparison of one level of technological refinement to another.

In practical application, it is sometimes better to use a more proven technology, than a newer, potentially better one.

Costs less, more design specialization, existing modification industry and technology...

And in military hardware, performance under duress is more important than better white sheet specs.

and the quaint plane that Edrick is proposing (w/o or with lesser computers, etc) would be like an ordinary telescopic sight, while the F-22 would be more akin to the hubble space telescope.

Why would you want to attach the Hubble space telescope to a Rifle?

in the F-22, those same computers analyzes the returns as it acquires and confirms the target.

Well, let me put it to you this way...

The Raptor’s software is composed of over 1.7 million lines of code...

Windows NT 3.1, 4-5 million lines of code
Windows NT 3.5, 7-8 million lines of code
Windows NT 4.0, 11-12 million lines of code
Windows 2000, 29+ million lines of code
Windows XP, 40 million lines of code
Windows Server 2003, 50 million lines of code

Odds are, that the OS the Raptor uses is not going to be able to do the following:

View JPG's
View MPG's
Playback MP3's
View HTML
etc, etc, etc...


When the CIP in the raptor begins analyzing the signal to noize ratio of radar returns...

It is not running a GUI, a Device driver registry, multitasking...

It is not running a child process, on an application level program, running on a Machine level Kernel (Translation program)

Every single line that is executed is machine code, fed directly into the CIP, with definitive results.


There is absolutely no need to push multi Gigaflops through your buses...

Most of the "Standard" application level, and child process level code is completely bypassed, and unnecessary.

You would be amazed at how fast computers can ACTUALLY run, when they don't have to translate every instruction from C to Machine code, search through memory to find dynamically linked objects, handle multiple device drivers from a list of device drivers... etc...

Most of what eats up a computer's processing power is this "Compatibility" level of code, and object handling.

Remove that "Compatibility" layer, and your average 400Mhz will do things that will surprise you.

GUI's are resource hogs, as are Direct X, and File type registries.

-Edrick


[edit on 11-11-2009 by Edrick]

Originally posted by Edrick
Odds are, that the OS the Raptor uses is not going to be able to do the following:

View JPG's
View MPG's
Playback MP3's
View HTML
etc, etc, etc...

I'm sure if your a front line pilot for the USAF you can afford to get your self a nice i-Phone... They do all that right? (I had a quick Google for how many lines of code in an i-Phone... Couldn't find anything straight away - would of been fun to compare that to an F-22 )

I got a feeling there will be a fair bit of graphics support in there tho - maybe not JPEG's but who knows? It's an intergrated part of a greater network - it's supposed to be able to get info including pics uploaded from any point, be that the Pentagon or a special ops grunt behind the front line...

modern pc`s put out over 40 GFlops -

*cough* 5000 gigaflops here *cough*.

Evergreen / Hemlock.

[edit on 14/11/2009 by C0bzz]

wasn`t there a story about the apache being able to play quake 3 or something on the hud?

One aspect to remeber as well is you cannot simply plot OTC chips into the system. They do require a certain degree of radiation hardening if memory serves me.