Every Project Magenta program that touches hardware does two jobs today. The MCP is an autopilot – and it also drives the MCP panel. The CDUs are flight management computers – and they also drive their keyboards and screens. The fly-by-wire flies the aircraft – and it also reads the yokes, the pedals and the control loading. Each one opens its own ports, speaks each maker’s language, waits for slow panels to wake up, and reconnects when they drop.
We are building the piece that takes the second job away from all of them: Project Magenta Brain. One Brain per simulator. It talks to all the hardware and carries every message between our programs. The MCP is an MCP, the CDU is a CDU, the fly-by-wire flies the aircraft – and Brain does the talking.
Once the programs stop carrying their own hardware, something else becomes possible: the whole cockpit – simulator, glass cockpits, CDUs, overhead – fits on one decently fast PC. Which raises the obvious question. How many monitors can one PC drive? Four? Eight?
To be continued.