CoreAVI debuts FACE-aligned, safety-certifiable graphics compositor engine

TAMPA, Fla. Core Avionics & Industrial Inc. (CoreAVI) is unveiling what company officials are calling the industry’s first EGL_EXT_compositor extension for CoreAVI’s OpenGL SC 1.0.1 and OpenGL SC 2.0 driver families that is aligned with The Open Group’s Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium and FACE Technical Standard, an open avionics standard for making military computing operations more robust, interoperable, portable, and secure.

Synthetic vision, 2D/3D map, and various mission computer applications can use CoreAVI’s composition engine to display complex video, 3D, and 2D overlay visual effects to improve situational awareness and the delivery of critical data to the operator. The EGL_EXT_compositor provides safety-critical graphics capabilities up to the most stringent certifiability levels, including FAA/EASA Design Assurance Level (DAL) A, and supports Wind River’s FACE conformant VxWorks 653 safety-certifiable real-time operating system (RTOS).

The EGL_EXT_compositor not only facilitates complex overlapping and blended graphics and video windowing, but can also be used to support mixed levels of safety certification amongst various independent partitions drawing to the same display, making it an option for high-reliability and safety-critical multicore display systems.

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The EGL_EXT_compositor extension minimizes application effort by enabling composition of multiple windows within a multi-partition or hypervisor-based graphics system. It allows for off-screen asynchronous updates and ensures information assurance by preventing any non-primary contexts and surfaces from rendering to the display. The compositor enables management and control of GPU allocation to specific contexts, including how much GPU memory a specific application is permitted to use, and allows each application to draw into its own off-screen window, which provides a level of security that ensures one application will not be overwritten with other applications’ video data.

"CoreAVI is excited to be the world’s first company to offer a FACE-aligned safety critical compositor engine," says Damian Fozard, CEO of CoreAVI. "With the growing need for multiple independent safety certifiable applications to share displays at one time, our compositor enables complex windowing management seamlessly and effectively."

“Wind River is honored to be the first platform to support this innovative graphics solution,” says Chip Downing, senior director of aerospace and defense at Wind River. “This solution perfectly augments our certified FACE conformant RTOS, VxWorks 653, and increases the capability for our joint customers in both military and commercial certified avionics deployments.”

Core Avionics & Industrial Inc. (CoreAVI​), a Channel One company, is a supplier of real- time and safety-critical graphics and video drivers, and "program ready"​ embedded graphics processors. CoreAVI’s suite of products enables commercial GPUs and SoC components to meet the requirements of long-term high-reliability and safety-critical embedded systems. This includes providing open standard graphics driver APIs specifically designed for embedded and safety-critical applications with support for all leading real-time operating systems, extended temperature screened components and long-term managed supply of components. These products with certification evidence and artifact kits for the most stringent levels of RTCA DO-254/DO-178C, EUROCAE ED-80/ED-12C, and ISO 26262.

Wind River®, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel® Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is deliversg software for the Internet of Things. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in more than 2 billion products. Wind River offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for addressing the system-level challenges and opportunities of IoT that is backed by world-class global professional services, award-winning customer support, and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the software and expertise that enable the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems.

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