FPGA soft-core of the Saab Viggen's 1963 airborne computer
A soft-core FPGA replica of the Saab CK37 — the world's first IC-based airborne computer, rebuilt from the original 1963 FMV maintenance manual and running a PID navigation loop in the original Q1.25 assembly. Target: OrangeCrab r0.2 (ECP5-25F) - FormerLab/ck37-core
FPGA soft-core of the Saab Viggen's 1963 airborne computer launched on March 20, 2026 with 22 votes, #847 of 23,380 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches.
In plain words
This project recreates the FPGA soft-core implementation of the airborne computer from Saab's Viggen fighter jet, originally designed in 1963. It allows users to run historical avionics software and study the computational architecture of Cold War-era military aircraft on modern programmable logic hardware. The project is hosted on GitHub and targets enthusiasts interested in retro computing, aviation history, and FPGA design.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
A soft-core FPGA replica of the Saab CK37 — the world's first airborne computer built with integrated circuits. The CK37 was the central navigation and fire control computer of the Saab 37 Viggen, Sweden's Mach 2 multirole fighter. First flown in 1963, it was the first computer in the world to use first-generation integrated circuits in an airborne application. Nearly 200 units were delivered between 1970 and 1978. Some remained in active service until the early 2000s. This project reconstructs the CK37 as a working FPGA soft-core, assembled from primary sources — including the official FMV maintenance manual Beskrivning CK37, Del 1 (1985-11-01) and Bengt Jiewertz's original design…from github.com
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