Originally Posted by
MechEngr
The 737 is rumored to be running an 80286 processor which is a well understood design.
This might be a part of the problem. The '286 isn't quite adequate to support fully multitasking operating systems. The memory management hardware isn't quite up to snuff*. So whatever O/S the DEUs are running, the failure of one process thread can hang the entire system.
*One of the reasons Linux and other true multitasking systems had to wait for the '386.