VME bus Reliability/Test Tools

The objective of this proposed effort is to research and develop innovative methods for supporting COTS (VME) architectures independent of their applications, users, or vendors. Great emphasis and priority has been placed on employing Commercial-Off-The- Shelf (COTS) equipment for military applications. To this end, it is becoming commonplace for designers to develop systems which are based- primarily on widely embraced VME architectures. As history has shown, supportability can pose significant cost and risk issues during all phases of system development and deployment. The difficulty of this problem increases as multiple hardware and software products are integrated to provide complex functionality. This is due primarily to the fact that each of the commercial suppliers and developers address the supportability problems with a different set of test devices, software tools, and philosophies. The migration to COTS has also introduced new wrinkles to system development due to reduced module hardening. The intent of this effort is to research the alternatives available to establish a common approach to testing and supporting these common architectures. An effort has also been made to address other typical system shortfalls such as system longevity.