Archive for January, 2013
Apollo 1 Memorial Ceremony: A night to reflect and remember
by 2nd Lt. Alicia Wallace
45th Space Wing Public Affairs
1/30/2013 - PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. – The 45th Space Wing hosted the 46th annual Apollo 1 Memorial Ceremony, Jan. 27 held at Launch Complex 34 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The event honored three former space pioneers, Apollo 1 crew members, Command Pilot Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee, who were killed by a flash fire during a launch pad test of their Saturn 1B rocket, Jan. 27, 1967.
Grissom’s wife, Betty Grissom, was in attendance at the event. During the ceremony, she was recognized for the sacrifices she made during Gus Grissom’s career. She has attended the ceremony every year since the tragedy.
“You have given more than anyone could have asked,” said Brig. Gen. Anthony Cotton, 45th Space Wing commander. “And we are grateful to you for the sacrifices that you have made.”
Also in attendance were family members and descendents of the spaceflight heroes. Grissom’s grandson, Cody, lit three symbolic candles to pay tribute to the astronauts.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, exactly 6:31 p.m., a bugler from the Naval Ordnance Test Unit played taps. This is the exact moment the flash fire occurred, killing all three astronauts.
General Cotton closed the evening’s ceremonies with a tribute to the space heroes and a message of gratitude from the members of the wing.
“On behalf of the men and women of the 45th Space Wing, thank you for letting us be a part of this solemn anniversary,” he said. “We thank and salute each and every one of you for the great things you have done for our nation.”
#ENERGY: "TI Unveils New Smart Grid SoCs"
Texas Instruments (TI) has unveiled dozens of new smart meter systems-on-chip (SoCs) for the burgeoning market for upgrading the power grids worldwide. Smart grids will cut energy consumption by matching usage patterns to electricity generation capabilities, but needs smart meters to work–and TI has an SoC for every smart grid app: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog
TI’s smart grid SoCs, software and reference designs enable in-home displays to equip consumers with information that enables them to control of their energy usage.
Further Reading
#CHIPS: "E.U.’s $2B Emerging Technologies initiative"
The European Union has funded a 10-year $2 billion Future and Emerging Technologies initiative that will develop microchips modeled on the human brain–the Human Brain Project–as well as graphene semiconductors aiming to replace silicon–the Graphene Flagship project. The long-range research will coordinate hundreds of European researchers and academic institutions toward the common goals of brain-like computers using lightweight super-fast carbon-based circuitry: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog
#ALGORITHMS: "IBM Sends Watson to College"
IBM’s Watson cluster supercomputer has already conquered the game-show Jeopardy by beating the human champions, has already advising doctors for more accurate diagnoses and is advising traders on which stocks to pick–all that without going to college. However, now that Watson has enrolled in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) researchers there promise to expand its field of applications as well as teach how to do “deeper thinking” than it does today: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog
A more general-purpose version of IBM’s artificially intelligent (AI) cluster supercomputer called Watson will be be installed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where it will be used by researchers there to deepen the AI’s cognitive abilities as well as to explore new application areas.
Further Reading
Emerson Network Power intros OpenVPX processor board
HONG KONG: Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity, announced a new 3U OpenVPX processor board designed to provide high compute performance, flexibility, and high speed fabric connectivity for a range of industrial, communication and military/aerospace applications.
The iVPX7225 is based on the dual-core third generation Intel Core i7 2.5 GHz processor, featuring the new Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) floating point instructions, with integrated graphics and memory controller and the mobile Intel QM77 PCH chipset with leading edge I/O functionality. It combines the significantly improved floating-point performance of the Intel Core i7 processor with the substantial bandwidth and system-enabling features of the 3U OpenVPX form factor.
The Emerson Network Power iVPX7225 is designed to operate in a wide range of OpenVPX enclosures, including the company’s VPX3000 system platform also launched today. On-board memory includes up to 16 GB DDR3L-1600 memory, embedded USB flash, and 1 MByte nonvolatile Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (F-RAM).
The iVPX7225 offers both PCI Express high speed data plane fabric connectivity and Gigabit Ethernet control plane connectivity with data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps. Additional connectivity includes three USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, three SATA ports, eight GPIO, DisplayPort, VGA and one XMC site for maximum flexibility.
“Many of our customers are developing demanding applications for highly constrained environments in terms of size, weight and power and Emerson Network Power’s iVPX7225 provides an outstanding solution,” said Eric Gauthier, VP, product marketing Emerson Network Power’s Embedded Computing business. “Available as a fully rugged single board computer for extreme environments with extended shock, vibration, temperatures and conduction or air cooling, it provides an exceptionally versatile platform for a wide range of High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) applications.”
The iVPX7225 software support includes UEFI compliant BIOS with password protection and a wide range of operating systems including Wind River VxWorks 6.9 and Linux 3.x.