In article .com,
Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Hi All,

I am a student for my private license, and during my last ground
school session, I was having discussion about how glass cockpits might
be made cheaper by using commoditized components.
[snip]]
and cost difference
should be huge . [Yes, I know, reliability, FAA
certification...yada...]

You say you know about reliability, etc. But do you really know what it takes
to do the safety analysis?

What are the failure modes of these components? How will failures
and errors be detected and handled? How will component changes
be handled? How much will it cost to repeat the appropriate analyses
when various vendors roll part numbers? How will you determine that
the part hasn't changed when the vendor didn't change the part number?
(Don't laugh, I've seen an LRU no longer work in a particular aircraft when
a chipset vendor changed a production process which ever so slightly
changed functionality but the vendor didn't change the part number).

And do you have any concept of what it would take to put a commodity
OS like windows into a safety-critical application?

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)