Story ID: 
CMC Certifies Smart Multifunction Display
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: CMC's MFD-4068 Smart Multifunction Display features an open-architecture software design. 
Word Count: 230
Transport Canada has granted technical standard order (TSO) approval for the CMC Electronics MFD-4068 Smart Multifunction Display (SMFD). One of the MFD-4068 display’s key attributes is its ability for one center-mounted display to drive adjacent displays and a head-up display, which is especially suited for trainer aircraft applications, according to Brad Nolen, v-p of sales and marketing.

The display features an open architecture platform that allows customers to develop their own applications. This includes customers such as military “programs with sensitive IP that they wish to keep in-house,” he explained, “or legacy software that they wish to re-host.” Examples of applications developed by customers and CMC include PFD, navigation, synthetic vision, and FMS applications, all of which can be displayed simultaneously.

CMC said the SMFD's target market is trainer and air transport aircraft, as well as helicopters, for both retrofit and forward-fit applications. Ideally suited for aircraft that operate in harsh environmental conditions, the display “offers superb optical quality, high graphics performance, true eight-bit color rendition with optical performance stabilized over its design lifetime and its extended operating temperature envelope,” according to CMC.

With multi-core processing, the MFD-4068 includes analog, commercial serial, and MIL-STD-1553 interfaces. The open architecture platform uses “non-proprietary standards for partitioning of applications (Arinc-653), according to CMC, and Green Hills Software’s Integrity-178 tuMP multi-core real-time operating system.