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>The Flight Control Computer (FCC):

At the core of the any flight control system (FCS) lies the FCC, today's COTS technology enables abundant computing power to be packaged in very small and light weight package. For our application, Freescale semiconductor's MPC555 microcontroller unit(MCU) was chosen for the task. This is quite powerful microcontroller with acclaimed PowerPC core operating at 40MHz capable of 63 MIPS. MPC555 has been extensively used in the industry for automotive powertrain control, ECU, avionics among others. Some other attractive features on this microcontroller include a builtin 64-bit hardware floating point unit (FPU) and extensive variety of I/O channels. A short summary of features is given below, for more visit Freescale's MPC555 product page, a very useful and upto date MPC555 resource is James' MPC555 & MPC5554 webpage,

• 26 KB of Static RAM
• 448 KB Flash EEPROM Memory with 5-V programming (CMF)
• General-Purpose I/O Support
• Two Time Processor Units (TPU3)
• 18-Channel Modular I/O System (MIOS1)
• Two Queued Analog-to-Digital Converter Modules (QADC)
• Two CAN 2.0B Controller Modules (TouCANs)
• Queued Serial Multi-Channel Module (QSMCM)

For development, Phytec's solution the PhyCore555 single board computer (SBC) was chosen which is based on the MPC555. Some of the salient features of this evaluation board and rapid develepment kit are,

• Single Board Computer in subminiature dimensions (72 x 57 mm) according to phyCORE low EMI specifications
• Controller and board-level signals extend to two high-density (0.635 mm) 160-pin Molex connectors on underside of SBC
• On-board memory:
  • External SRAM: 4 MB flow-through synchronous external burst SRAM (32-bit access, 0 wait states, 2-1-1-1 Burst Mode)
  • Flash: MB external Flash
• Dual Full 2.0B CAN with PCA82C250 transceiver support
• SPI and dual UART with RS-232 level-converters (optionally configurable as TTL-level signals)
• Dual 16-channel A/D-converters with 10-bit resolution
• BDM debug-interface
• Requires 5 V/40mA and 3.3 V./300-620 mA operating voltage
• Industrial temperature range (-40° to +85° C)
• MTBF = 776,765 hours

> Real Time Operating System (RTOS):

PhyCore555 runs eCos (an acronym for embedded configurable operating system) RTOS. It is a unique RTOS availible in the open source community that has a mix of huge target processor support base, a highly configurable through an intuitive GUI based configuration tool that allows user to select functionality and support for various I/O devices and software standards thus the user can optimize the kernel footprint by disabling features that are unnecessary for an application. eCos developer community (mailing lists) are very active and helpful. eCos supports POSIX standards, and most of GCC standard libraries, thus software coding is a breeze in GCC environment. For more info on how to setup eCos development enviroment on a host PC visit here