[pratap103]

Was really curious as to what Airbus was using, thanks for this! Why not just use the latest CPUs though? I can't imagine the cost would be relatively significant in the greater scheme of things. Are the legacy CPU's really better for this use-case?

[ChuckNorris89]

Aero industry moves at a very slow pace. The state of the art F-22 Raptor uses intel 386 cpu and the F-35 lightning upgraded to more "modern" PowerPC CPUs, similar to the ones on legacy Macs.

Planes don't need insane multitasking processing power like our smartphones or PCs. They mostly do signal processing and sensor fusion in a tight loop which is quite trivial even for legacy CPUs as it's basic flight math equations which results in highly optimized code.

In terms of aero chips, basic is always better as you want a silicon that's tried and tested for decades to have a deep understanding of it's quirks and bugs so you know the code execution is reliable.

[varjag]

The redesign and compliance costs are enormous. That said, these costs are something Boeing could afford many times over.

Manpower could also be a bottleneck. Design talent is not what it used to be in the first world after much of production moved overseas.

[salex89]

I was trying to investigate this about Airbus but without much luck. I even found they use a 80186 with another Motorola processor for cross checking values. I also wonder does maybe Airbus have "more" processors for different tasks? I also read their A340 uses 80386. That might mean they have expertise and groundwork set to migrate the A320 to the i386, of they already haven't (hard to find data). The 'bus is a much more digitalised plane and 20 years younger, I would guess they've got something different or a bit more modern.

[jiberwarrior]

Probably minuscule when stacked next to the costs of grounding all 737MAXs for half a year and the negative publicity of multiple planes catastrophically nosediving out of the sky

[fit2rule]

>Are the legacy CPU's really better for this use-case?

Yes. Legacy CPU's have the advantage of years and years of testing. Newer CPU's are not as reliable for safety-critical systems inasmuch as not all the kinks have been worked out, and there may be catastrophic bugs in newer designs that won't be discovered until mass deployment on consumer markets.

Meltdown and Spectre have sent shock-waves through the safety-computing industry. I wouldn't want to fly on any plane that is running on the latest-generation Intel chips - they're just not settled yet.