Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division today announced that it is collaborating with Green Hills Software to provide defense and aerospace system developers with COTS multicore solutions for critical and high-assurance systems based on NXP Semiconductors® Power Architecture® processors. Resulting from this effort, Green Hills Software’s field-proven INTEGRITY-178 tuMP™ safety- and security-critical multicore real-time operating system (RTOS) is now supported on select Curtiss-Wright NXP-based single board computers (SBC), including the just announced RTCA/DO-254 DAL-C safety-certifiable 3U VPX VPX3-151 which is based on NXP’s QorIQ P3041 processor.
Green Hills is the only RTOS supplier to have successfully completed all of the RTCA/DO-178B Level A certification requirements for its multicore RTOS, including guidance in the CAST-32A Position Paper. Curtiss-Wright, by combining Green Hills Software’s industry-leading software certification expertise with its own RTCA/DO-254 hardware development and verification process, is now able to deliver one of the industry’s first DO-254-compliant COTS multicore SBCs that support the RTCA/DO-178B Level A-compliant INTEGRITY-178 tuMP multicore RTOS.
"Curtiss-Wright looks forward to a long and successful relationship with Green Hills Software, delivering COTS products and safety certification services to customers requiring comprehensive hardware and software solutions that meet the assurance requirements of their critical systems," said defense solutions senior vice-president and general manager Lynn Bamford.
"The Green Hills INTEGRITY-178 tuMP multicore RTOS is an ideal complement to our safety-certifiable COTS modules based on NXP’s QorIQ multicore processors. This new class of rugged SBCs, when combined with INTEGRITY-178 tuMP, frees system engineers from the time-consuming and expensive tasks of creating many of their system’s certification artifacts or building the modules themselves."
Designed with an RTCA/DO-254 design process from the beginning of the development cycle, Curtiss-Wright’s safety-certifiable multicore processor SBCs provide system designers with a complete COTS hardware/software solution for their avionics systems. To speed and ease the safety certification process, an RTCA/DO-254 data artifact package for each SBC and a certifiable board support package (BSP) with RTCA/DO-178 artifacts for the multicore RTOS, will be available. In addition to announcing support for INTEGRITY-178 tuMP on the new VPX3-151 SBC, Curtiss-Wright and Green Hills also plan to announce support for the RTOS on Curtiss-Wright’s family of NXP QorIQ T2080 processor-based SBCs, including the 3U VPX VPX3-133 in Q1 2017.
"Our certification experience includes a 15-year track record of successful DO-178B Level A and EAL 6+ compliant operating system deliveries that have relied exclusively on our own team of dedicated U.S.-based development and certification engineers," said Green Hills Software founder and chief executive officer Dan O’Dowd.
"Green Hills is the only RTOS supplier to have been successfully certified according to the NSA’s EAL 6+ Separation Kernel Protection Profile and the only RTOS supplier that does not depend on third-party software certification and verification service companies in order to comply with RTCA/DO-178B Level A. With the successful completion of all RTCA/DO-178B Level A certification requirements for our INTEGRITY-178 tuMP multicore RTOS now in the record books, we are looking forward to working with Curtiss-Wright, the industry leader in COTS safety-certifiable hardware, in order to provide a more comprehensive solution to our customers."
The INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS enables users of Curtiss-Wright SBCs to utilize all available compute power from all of the module’s available QorIQ cores, including virtual cores, all based on deterministic, user-defined core and scheduling assignments.
About the VPX3-151 Single Board Computer
The conduction-cooled VPX3-151 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core QorIQ P3041 processor supported by up to 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM. The rugged SBC eases and speeds the integration of low-power, dual 32-bit Power Architecture processing into deployed airborne systems that require secure, deterministic and high performance in harsh environments. The size, weight and power (SWaP)-optimized VPX3-151 provides a cost-effective COTS alternative to custom-developed DO-254/DO-178 safety-certifiable hardware. Its extensive complement of I/O interfaces includes EIA-232 serial, EIA-422 serial, Ethernet, and TTL discrete I/O.