New Software Issues Found on the MAX
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I feel sorry for the code-writers who are working on this. I mean the ones actually doing the job, trying to understand and solve the problems of the system they need to change, while the rest of the company and its suppliers, thousands and thousands of people mostly with families and mortgages, just stand around twiddling their thumbs and praying that today is the day the damn thing actually works. Just think what that must feel like for the coders, knowing that all those thousands of other people are kind of peering over their shoulders and willing them to stop messing about and just fix this, right now. And I bet the team of coders is tiny. It has to be tiny. The job can't be done by a huge team, it's not that sort of job. Throwing extra resources at it would be nonsense - in fact it would be counter-productive. If I'm right there's this tiny group of very clever people coming in to work each day, to spend another day struggling to dig the whole Boeing company out of the hole it's in, none of them making the sort of money the Boeing board does, and none of them responsible for the design errors which caused the problem in the first place. So I feel sorry for them.
Rubbish. You can do anything in C++ that you can do in C, and a great deal safer. I speak from much experience. People often confuse C++ with more "automagic" languages like Java and Ruby. C++ has no garbage collection, and if you want to manage memory allocation yourself, including doing everything statically, it's easy. In 2020 doing any major new code in C is a sign of insanity. Of course if you already have a legacy of 10 million lines of C code, like my erstwhile employer, you're a bit stuck with it.
The last thing I would like to do is trigger off a debate in this forum about what's the best program language for this and that. However, I would bite my tongue off without the remark that if you do not use all the fancy ++ stuff of C++ then you end up rather close to ... you guessed it.
But thank you very much, Fly Airpt, for the link, very interesting read and the results are no surprise to me.
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I believe that the B737 FCC software is written in ADA.
I am not 100% certain of it, but I know that the FCC of the Classic serie (300, 400, 500) was written in ADA, that the FMS of nowadays B737 (NG and MAX) is in ADA, that Collins Aerospace (the FCC subcontractor) works mostly in ADA, and 99% of the B777 code is written in ADA.
Note: I believe that earlier versions of the FCC were written in FORTRAN.
I am not 100% certain of it, but I know that the FCC of the Classic serie (300, 400, 500) was written in ADA, that the FMS of nowadays B737 (NG and MAX) is in ADA, that Collins Aerospace (the FCC subcontractor) works mostly in ADA, and 99% of the B777 code is written in ADA.
Note: I believe that earlier versions of the FCC were written in FORTRAN.
Last edited by Luc Lion; 21st Jan 2020 at 19:28.
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I would assume that the main issues are the interrupt handling, working with the interrupts on the 286 has been always a pain.
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
I would assume that the main issues are the interrupt handling, working with the interrupts on the 286 has been always a pain.
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
setup a fully functional rig
Of course you CAN still be surprised by something the simulator didn't do accurately (just like a flight sim) but you reduce the chances and you pay special attention to the places where that might make a difference.
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FrequentSLF please see here for interrupt support in ADA.
https://www.adaic.org/resources/add_...ml/RM-C-3.html
https://www.adaic.org/resources/add_...ml/RM-C-3.html
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That would only handle the first 5 seconds or so of the software operation. As soon as any mechanical system was required you need a plane that is ready to be flown, as in fueled and generators and engines running. Otherwise it is stuck like a non-running car turned to the Run position, but not started, and is just an idiot light check. I think the risk of a ready to fly with engines-running plane in a parking lot is more of a problem.
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I would assume that the main issues are the interrupt handling, working with the interrupts on the 286 has been always a pain.
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
What surprises me is that they did not setup a fully functional rig, they have 400 737 parked, and could have used one as a lab rig for the development of the SW, is that something difficult to do?
A commercial aircraft is not any more complex than a modern fly by wire train . . . probably not even an order of magnitude more complex than a modern car . . .
Surely . . Boeing don't do this on a real plane . . . like people used to do in the stone age . . .
Edited to add : testing as described is only a small part of the testing required, factor the cost of testing being >2-4x the cost of writing the software in the first place . . . and that is conservative . . . which answers the java programmers question of why it's taken so long to get round to testing it on an aircraft . . .
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Is Ancient Silicon The Root Of Boeing’s Problems?
It is about time that the entire area is revisited as the handheld game player the 4 year old has in seat 28G is many times more powerful than the FCCs. All smart phones are way way above the capabilities of the CPU in the FCC. Like communications the time has come to abandon some of these old 'safety' ideas and move to a more commercial approach as is used in other areas. Size, Weight and Power are not an issue these days.
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What surprises me is that they don't have a full simulator, which simulates the aircraft to the control system (not the same as the simulator the fly-boys sit in and play). In this day and age it is criminally inept not to do so. 30 years ago we fully simulated trains to the train control systems to ensure that when the control system hit the tracks in a train it worked, including everythng from signalling systems to wheel slip on wet rails, same goes on today in the automotive industry, down to the simulation of the chassis/road/surface/tyre, etc, etc. I have never delivered a control system capable of killing people which was not substantially tested on a full capability simulator whch could inject any fault or situation possible to the software to ensure it dealt with it, however impossible to believe.
A commercial aircraft is not any more complex than a modern fly by wire train . . . probably not even an order of magnitude more complex than a modern car . . .
Surely . . Boeing don't do this on a real plane . . . like people used to do in the stone age . . .
Edited to add : testing as described is only a small part of the testing required, factor the cost of testing being >2-4x the cost of writing the software in the first place . . . and that is conservative . . . which answers the java programmers question of why it's taken so long to get round to testing it on an aircraft . . .
A commercial aircraft is not any more complex than a modern fly by wire train . . . probably not even an order of magnitude more complex than a modern car . . .
Surely . . Boeing don't do this on a real plane . . . like people used to do in the stone age . . .
Edited to add : testing as described is only a small part of the testing required, factor the cost of testing being >2-4x the cost of writing the software in the first place . . . and that is conservative . . . which answers the java programmers question of why it's taken so long to get round to testing it on an aircraft . . .
Which is what they did. But it isn't something that seems reasonably arranged for the multiple compilations each day that might be done while working with simulator testing.
So 80286's continue to be used as they can be formally proved
What of "formally proved" now. How much fix testing and regression testing is required to regain the "formally proved" status. It is not sufficient to prove just the hardware and software since a layer of microcode exists as the sandwich filling within the ALU and PROM/ low order RAM portion of the 286 which may not be tolerating some minor timing discrepancy on either side of the interface to cause the failure. Is the 286 perhaps being driven to it's critical limits?
IG
I would expect the next generation processor to be an FPGA rather than a microprocessor. I see some links exploring ADA on FPGAs, but it seems to be programming the FPGA to act like a microprocessor.
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That would be the Intel 80286, I expect. However Intel would certainly license the core to embedded systems developers for production at rates and for markets in which Intel could no longer afford to maintain fabrication. For example: Renasas 80C286 went EOL in 2017. Would not be surprised if someone bought 5000 of them for the shelf.
I'd be surprised here too. These days you can get haardened RISC and PPC based processors that would provide a ton more power and flexibility than a 286-based design. There's also probably a push to use lower cost off-the-shelf components.
Now the poor software guys working on the max get more time. The first move of B's new management in the right direction to get the max flying again. I hope they clear up some other issues as well until summer (2020 !).
And thank you all for your valuable contributions and explanations! Has been very enlightening and is good to see that pprune also hosts know-how complementary to stick and rudder.
And thank you all for your valuable contributions and explanations! Has been very enlightening and is good to see that pprune also hosts know-how complementary to stick and rudder.
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The Boeing engineers did not have the luxury of starting from a clean sheet and "getting it right by design". They had stiffware that has been operational for years and had to modify the code so that the FCCs operated in a different way without changing anything that was not essential to change for the task at hand and without breaking any current functions. Maintenance programming especially of embedded code and modifying the code so it does things differently without affecting anything else is nothing like simple code writing. It is possible that some very basic timing issue made the live aircraft slightly different to the avionics test bench. This is the reason regression tests are run when the new code is ported to and implemented in the aircraft - and the tests found an issue - that is what the tests are for.