How Rapid is Rapid Prototyping? Analysis of ESPADON Programme Results
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How Rapid is Rapid Prototyping? Analysis of ESPADON Programme Results Bob K. Madahar BAE SYSTEMS Advanced Technology Centre, West Hanningfield Road, Gt. Baddow, Chelmsford CM2 8HN, UK Email: [email protected]
Ian D. Alston BAE SYSTEMS Advanced Technology Centre, West Hanningfield Road, Gt. Baddow, Chelmsford CM2 8HN, UK Email: [email protected]
Denis Aulagnier Thales Airborne Systems, 10 avenue de la 1`ere DFL, 29283 Brest Cedex, France Email: [email protected]
Hans Schurer Thales Naval Nederland, Zuidelijke Havenweg 40, P.O. Box 42, 7550 GD Hengelo, The Netherlands Email: [email protected]
Mark Thomas Thales Underwater Systems, Dolphin House, Ashurst Drive, Bird Hall Lane, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire, SK3 0XB, UK Email: [email protected]
Brigitte Saget MBDA France, 20-22 rue Grange Dame Rose, BP 150, 78141 Velizy-Villacoublay Cedex, France Email: [email protected] Received 14 March 2002 and in revised form 9 October 2002 New methodologies, engineering processes, and support environments are beginning to emerge for embedded signal processing systems. The main objectives are to enable defence industry to field state-of-the-art products in less time and with lower costs, including retrofits and upgrades, based predominately on commercial off the shelf (COTS) components and the model-year concept. One of the cornerstones of the new methodologies is the concept of rapid prototyping. This is the ability to rapidly and seamlessly move from functional design to the architectural design to the implementation, through automatic code generation tools, onto real-time COTS test beds. In this paper, we try to quantify the term “rapid” and provide results, the metrics, from two independent benchmarks, a radar and sonar beamforming application subset. The metrics show that the rapid prototyping process may be sixteen times faster than a conventional process. Keywords and phrases: rapid prototyping, COTS, model year, beamformer, EDA tools, heterogeneous platform, FPGA.
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INTRODUCTION
The trinational European EUCLID/Eurofinder defence project called ESPADON (environment for signal processing application development and rapid prototyping) completed in September 2001 [1]. The ESPADON consortium comprised Thales and MBDA from France, Thales Naval Nederland, BAE SYSTEMS, and Thales Underwater Systems
Ltd. from the United Kingdom. The primary objective of the three-years project was to significantly improve (reduced cost and timescales) the process, by which complex military digital processing systems are designed, developed, and supported. A new design methodology and supporting development environment has been reinvented to support this aim through reuse, concurrent engineering, rapid insertion of COTS technology and the key concepts of rapid and virtual
How Rapid is Rapid Prototyping? Analysis of ESPADON Programme Results
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