Boeing 787 uses Android-based entertainment system, totals 69TB of SSD storage space
Those of you that go beyond our Rooting Tutorials might have noticed that we don’t talk a lot about airplanes here on Android Authority, as most of them don’t have anything to do with the Android OS, or even tangent tech for that matter. However, the new and amazing Boeing 787 Dreamliner has found its way into our daily coverage thanks to one of the most impressive Android-based entertainment systems we’ve ever feasted our eyes upon.Although Boeing has announced that the number of 787 orders has ramped up to 859, only 14 planes have been shipped thus far. One of them, belonging to Qatar Airways, was recently showcased at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK , and although it should use 20% less fuel than a Boeing 767 and is as classy as you can imagine, what really impresses Android fans is the fact that each of its 254 seats come equipped with an Android-based Thales IEFC (in-flight entertainment and connectivity) system.
Just in case you’re wondering why does it looks like I’m praising the Thales IEFC, the reason is because its specs include a 17-inch display for the business class (10-inch display for the economy class), a STMicro dual-core ARM-based processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD). That’s inside each of the 254 seats of the Dreamliner! As for the main server, it is equally impressive, featuring 32 x86 cores, 128 GB of RAM and a whopping 4TB (as in 4000GB) of SSD storage space. Passengers will also be able to make calls using the 3G microcell, as well as access the plane’s Wi-Fi network to access the Internet.
While the total 69TB of SSD storage space definitely doesn’t come cheap, Extremetech did some numbers, and it turns out that the airlines could save a little under 1.5 million dollars worth of fuel each year, thanks to the fact that Solid State Drives are considerably lighter than regular hard drives. The passenger wins, the airlines win! That seems like a very cool principle to me, although you can feel free to drop an anti-corporatist / anti-capitalist comment in the section below!
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