L-1011 Simulator System Architecture

L-1011 System Architecture 

Had a good conversation with Premek Truksa today and realized that I had not blogged about the revised computer and interface architecture for the L-1011 sim. Well, as they always say in engineering and innovation ... "the first idea is always wrong". With that in mind, over the last few months the systems architecture of the L-1011 sim has changed a few times and as we work through iterations of the model it gets more and more refined. As you can see in the high-level topology drawing above, as of today, October 2013, we are planning on running the L-1011 simulator with the following components:

1. Three Apple OSX systems running the visual rendering engines and one running the core physics and systems engine. These three systems (depicted in blue) will be tied together by a dedicated 1Gbit Ethernet network. 
2. The OSX systems running the physics model will also connect to the primary systems network through a second ethernet connection. This will be a 10/100T Ethernet network and all components in the physical simulator will be controlled via this network link. 
3. The systems network connects a series of ARINC 429 interfaces that will receive and deliver information directly to the physics engine or will send and receive data from a Linux system that handles analog input and output.
4. Besides the ARINC 429 interfaces there will also an interface (or a set of) that can produce tachometer signals for engine instruments. 
5. Lastly, all of the analog switch and annunciator I/O will be handled via INTERBUS. The INTERBUS master is the Analog System Linux server. 

For now, this is the systems architecture we are building towards. It could, of course change over time.