A Look Back in Time

CES was founded in 1981 by a group of engineers working in the physics community, whose interest in life was speed in various forms: car and motorcycle racing, sailing and flying. When they decided to create a company, their aim was to develop a winning product line for the real-time computing market.

Due to the professional background of the original CES engineers, the first products were designed for the physics market, which is still a very strong activity today.

Then back in 1986, CES started to investigate the aerospace test equipment market. After over twenty years and continual expansion, CES is a first tier equipment supplier and is able to deliver a complete product range for simulation, validation, test and analysis, which is used in the most important North American and European commercial and military aircraft programs.

Over the years, CES has developed hardware and software building blocks consisting of processors, interfaces, data links, network products and workstation connections, with the aim of producing a “construction set”, whose elements can be combined to solve just about all aspects of mission computers and real-time acquisition simulation systems. These building blocks use well-known standards in hardware (VPX, VME, CompactPCI, PCI) and in software (Unix, real-time kernels).

Since 1992, CES has been a pioneer in ATM research, which has resulted in the development of a real-time network package of hardware and software, putting CES at the heart of world-leading telecommunications programs. With the advent of IP, the bridge between ATM and Ethernet and the introduction of the AdvancedTCA specifications, CES developed its know-how to produce a complete family of AdvancedMC boards.

Where We are Today

CES designs and manufactures boards and bundled packages including all of the required hardware and software systems, dedicated to data communication and acquisition in hard real-time in three areas:

• Nuclear and particle physics, including DAQs for experiments and accelerator controls
• Avionic ground and flight test, validation and simulation equipment, airborne mission computers and primary flight computers
• Telecommunication network controllers and multi-service platforms using ATM and IP

Racing on a tight budget taught CES the hard way that success was a delicate combination of innovation and quality, and that adding the key elements of modularity and global coherence would produce a successful product line.