Benchmarking of the CAE-MPIC interface cards using ARINC 661 standard: An example of a university-industry collaboration
Grandjonc Thomas, Khattabi Yahya · 2016
The CAE benchmarking project is an industrial project assigned to eight undergraduate students from École Polytechnique de Montréal to help CAE Inc. implement in their simulators a more efficient hardware solution for the Cockpit Display System (CDS) using ARINC 661 standard. Students use the latest technology software available to the aerospace industry such as VAPS XT to design and implement the CDS and create an architecture for benchmarking purposes. This paper also outlines briefly the potential benefits that can materialize with such collaborations between universities and the aeronautical industry at the undergraduate level. Based on the tests performed using standard ARINC 661 widgets, the students were able to gather relevant data in a simulation environment. They were able to characterize the relationships between the required graphics display performance and the hardware parameters of the proprietary card known as CAE-MPIC, such as CPU/GPU consumption, memory usage, and latency. This collaboration project has enabled the students to provide CAE with significant data in order to decide to carry on or re-scope their graphics development project. Outsourcing R&D projects to undergraduate students is a very effective cost-saving and risk-mitigating approach to non-critical industrial projects and an excellent way to immerse the future engineers in a real world environment.