Esterline CMC Electronics selects Green Hills Software INTEGRITY-178B RTOS with FACE support for flight management system

WRIGHT PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, 2 April 2013. Esterline CMC Electronics (CMC) has selected the INTEGRITY-178B single-core operating system from Green Hills Software, a provider of high-assurance operating systems, as the basis of its CMA-4000 Flight Management System (FMS).

CMC engineers will leverage the DO-178B Level A robust partitioning capabilities of the INTEGRITY-178B real-time operating system (RTOS) in support of delivering the Flight Management System for an avionics upgrade program.

The INTEGRITY-178B RTOS functionality selected by CMC for DO-178B Level A certification can host applications that align with the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard. This includes integration of existing Green Hills Software DO-178B Level A Partitioning-Journaling File System (PJFS-178B) and IPFLITE Ethernet stacks as part of the PowerPC-based CMA-4000 system.

The CMA-4000 will be capable of hosting FACE aligned applications developed using C, C++, and Ada95 programming languages. CMC will develop FMS applications that are FACE aligned. The FMS applications developed by CMC will interact with the INTEGRITY-178B RTOS via ARINC 653 API calls defined in the FACE Safety Operating System Profile. Adherence to an Operating System Profile defined in the FACE Technical Standard is a necessary part of satisfying requirements for an application to become FACE conformant.

The FACE Technical Standard is an open standard published by the FACE Consortium, an Open Group managed consortium.

"The reference architecture defined in the FACE Technical Standard is a complex system, complete with interface, data flow, and component definitions. The Operating System Segment provides the environment that all the other FACE segments operate within. With Green Hills Software providing the Operating System Segment, CMC can focus on its core strength, namely the development of portable flight management system applications and other FACE segments required by the architecture," says Don Paolucci, general manager, Navigation Systems, Esterline CMC Electronics.

"Green Hills Software has been a principal member of the FACE Consortium since 2010," explains Dan O'Dowd, founder and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software. "Green Hills Software continues our commitment to the FACE Consortium and its members through the integration of RTOS, middleware, language run-times, compilers, and debug tools into products aligned with the FACE Technical Standards that can be used with confidence by customers such as CMC."

The INTEGRITY-178B partitioning-enforcing operating system is compliant to both DO-178B Level A safety objectives and high-assurance security requirements (Common Criteria EAL 6+). INTEGRITY-178B can uniquely host, as a single product, FACE portable applications developed to the FACE Safety Operating System Profile and the FACE Security Operating System Profile. INTEGRITY-178B customers can obtain a single RTOS that can be used for installations with safety, security, or both safety and security assurance requirements.

ARINC 653 XML capabilities are the standard supported mechanism for configuring partition resources when INTEGRITY-178B is used as the basis for a FACE Operating System Segment and all systems utilizing the ARINC 653 services.