Real-time Interupt Driven Programming

I worked on the software for the radar of the Panavia Tornado fighter aircraft, more specically the Air Defence Variant (ADV), or interceptor version.

The coding was in assembler, Fortran, and ATLAS, a 4GL. It was interesting doing real-time interupt driven programming, counting how many clock cycles the assembler took to execute in the interupt loop, and replacing them with faster ones so we could fit more in.

Only a year out of university I found myself in charge of a team of 6 software developers and all the software for a £25m automated test rig. It was interesting developing the software and then taking it around to the secure test area where they had the real radars, loading it up and running it through scan patterns and locking on to targets. More fun than sitting at home playing computer games.

Tornado at RIAT 2016

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