The Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS) is a fault-tolerant distributed computer system architecture that was developed to meet the real time computational needs of advanced aerospace vehicles. One such vehicle is the Advanced Launch System (ALS) being developed jointly by NASA and the Department of Defense to launch heavy payloads into low earth orbit at one tenth the cost (per pound of payload) of the current launch vehicles. An avionics architecture that utilizes the AIPS hardware and software building blocks was synthesized for ALS. The AIPS for ALS architecture synthesis process starting with the ALS mission requirements and ending with an analysis of the candidate ALS avionics architecture is described. Lala, Jaynarayan H. and Harper, Richard E. and Jaskowiak, Kenneth R. and Rosch, Gene and Alger, Linda S. and Schor, Andrei L. Unspecified Center ADVANCED LAUNCH SYSTEM (STS); AIRBORNE/SPACEBORNE COMPUTERS; ARCHITECTURE (COMPUTERS); AVIONICS; DIGITAL COMPUTERS; DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING; FAULT TOLERANCE; INFORMATION SYSTEMS; COMPUTER SYSTEMS DESIGN; DESIGN ANALYSIS; HEAVY LIFT LAUNCH VEHICLES; LOW EARTH ORBITS; MISSION PLANNING; REAL TIME OPERATION...