Estimated reading time 6 minutes, 56 seconds.
Curtiss-Wright’s defense solutions division has made two significant announcements.
The company has expanded its portfolio of DO-254/DO-178C safety certifiable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products with the introduction of two new rugged 3U VPX high performance graphics processor modules.
Based on AMD’s latest embedded graphics processing unit (GPU), the Radeon E8860, both of these multi-head graphics cards support the long lifecycle availability required for defense and aerospace programs.
Through the use of a suite of CoreAVI software drivers and supported by the embedded industry’s longest component supply program, availability for VPX3-717 and VPX3-719 module hardware and software is ensured for 15-plus years.
Designed for use in safety certifiable applications, these size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C)-optimized modules were developed to meet DO-254 DAL C and DO-178C DAL A certification.
DO-254 and DO-178C certification artifact kits, available from Curtiss-Wright, ease platform certification, speed time to market, and significantly reduce the cost and risk of developing safety certifiable electronics subsystems for commercial and military aviation platforms.
“We are very excited to announce these new safety certifiable rugged graphics cards,” said Lynn Bamford, senior vice president and general manager, defense solutions division. “These SWaP optimized 3U VPX graphics engines enable system designers to speed the design of DO-254/DO-178B safety certifiable avionics systems, eliminating the high cost of custom solutions. Even better, they feature unmatched 15-plus year availability for hardware and software, a true boon for long lifecycle aerospace and defense programs.”
Collaboration with Green Hills Software
Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division also announced that it is collaborating with Green Hills Software to support the RTCA/DO-178C certified multi-core INTEGRITY-178 tuMP (time-variant unified multi processing) real-time operating system (RTOS) on its safety certifiable COTS single board computers (SBC).
The first Curtiss-Wright product to support Green Hills Software’s safety certified multi-core RTOS is the recently introduced 3U OpenVPX VPX3-1220, an RTCA/ DO-254 design assurance level (DAL) C safety certifiable SBC.
Based on Intel’s latest generation Mobile Xeon processor E3 v5 (formerly known as “Skylake-H”), the rugged VPX3-1220 features a low-power version of the Xeon processor and delivers high performance quad-core x86 processing with integrated graphics at typically 50 percent the power levels of previous solutions.
The availability of INTEGRITY-178 tuMP for the VPX3-1220 provides the ideal combination for system integrators that require optimal throughput and industry-leading SWaP benefits for their Intel-based multi-core critical system.
The announcement follows Green Hills Software’s recent completion of all RTCA/DO-178B Level A certification requirements for INTEGRITY-178 tuMP. The combination of Curtiss-Wright’s RTCA/DO-254 safety certifiable SBCs and artifact kits, with a board support package (BSP) provided by Green Hills Software for its safety certified multi-core RTOS will significantly reduce the time and cost for integrators to certify avionics systems deployed on military and commercial manned and unmanned aircraft.
Designed with an RTCA/DO-254 design process from the beginning of the development cycle, Curtiss-Wright’s safety certifiable multi-core processor SBCs, when combined with Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS, will provide system designers with a complete COTS hardware/software solution for 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 multi-core RTOS, will be available.
“We are very excited to collaborate with Green Hills Software to bring the performance and cost benefits of safety certifiable COTS multi-core processors to rugged embedded avionics systems,” said Lynn Bamford, senior vice president and general manager, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions division.
“Their INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS is an ideal complement to our industry-leading safety certifiable COTS single board computers. Designed for use in military and commercial airborne applications, this new class of SBCs frees system designers from the time-consuming tasks of creating all of their avionics systems’ low level artifacts or building the modules themselves. Our COTS DO-254 artifact kit makes this SBC the industry’s highest performance multi-core solution to meet the rapidly increasing demands of system designers seeking safety certifiable COTS products.”
“Green Hills Software is extremely proud to be supporting Curtiss-Wright’s safety-certifiable COTS boards. Their impressive lineup of advanced multi-core SBCs, starting with their VPX3-1220, is a perfect match for our INTEGRITY-178 tuMP operating system,” said Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software.
“INTEGRITY-178 tuMP allows VPX3-1220 users to utilize all available compute power from the eight virtual cores of the new Intel Skylake processor. INTEGRITY-178 tuMP’s built-in capabilities for the VPX3-1220 include GuestOS virtualization of multiple Linux and/or Windows applications combined with the simultaneous operation of safety- and security-critical applications in native INTEGRITY-178 64-bit mode, all based on deterministic, user-defined core and scheduling assignments.”
The VPX3-1220 is the industry’s first multi-core Intel Xeon-based SBC designed to meet DO-254 design assurance level (DAL) C for use on safety critical military and civil aerospace platforms.
This high-performance, safety certifiable COTS module is supported by a wide range of popular operating environments, including real-time operating systems certifiable to DO-178C. Because the VPX3-1220 is offered with off-the-shelf certifiable design artifacts available from Curtiss-Wright it speeds the system safety certification process.
Available with certifiable DO-254 design artifacts from Curtiss-Wright, this powerful VPX module can greatly speed the deployment and certification of critical manned and unmanned airborne safety certifiable applications.
This SBC is ideal for use in SWaP-C constrained aerospace and defense systems. It’s designed for general purpose mission computing applications that require the highest possible processing performance while consuming low power. It speeds and simplifies the integration of Intel Xeon-class processing into demanding deployed applications such as mission computing, image and display processing, virtualization and small multi-SBC ISR systems.
