INTEGRITY-178 tuMP is currently the only RTOS to be part of the certification of a multicore system to DO-178C and CAST-32A multicore requirements. Green Hills has extended INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS’ long-standing support for Intel processors to single board computers and systems with the latest Intel Core i7 processor, including the AMMP-304-01 mission computer from Mercury Systems.
The 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor is capable of delivering up to 40x better performance than traditional safety-certifiable processors when all four processor cores are active and used efficiently.
Certification to RTCA/DO-178C airworthiness is difficult for multicore processors due to the unpredictable behaviour resulting from shared resource contention among processor cores. The requirements for addressing that multicore interference are specified in the CAST-32A multicore position paper.
The INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS is the only operating system to be part of a successful multicore certification to DO-178C and CAST-32A objectives. Avionics computers certified to DO-178C objectives using other operating systems have only one core active in a multicore processor, with the other cores typically held in reset.
“We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Green Hills Software through its support of our latest Gen 11 Core i7 CPU in safety-critical avionics,” said Tony Franklin, GM Federal and Aerospace Group, Intel. “The high performance of our latest processor in safety-critical airborne systems can only be realised with an operating system that supports full multicore utilisation in a certifiable way. Green Hills Software has a demonstrated track record of multicore certifications.”
The INTEGRITY-178 tuMP high-assurance RTOS from Green Hills Software is the only RTOS that has actually been part of a multicore system certified to DO-178C airborne safety requirements. It is a multicore RTOS with support for running a multi-threaded DAL A application across multiple processor cores in symmetric multi-processing (SMP) or bound multi-processing (BMP) configurations, as well as supporting the more basic asymmetric multi-processing (AMP).
INTEGRITY-178 tuMP was the first RTOS to be certified conformant to the FACE Technical Standard, edition 3.0, and it is the only RTOS with multicore interference mitigation for all shared resources, enabling the system integrator to meet CAST-32A objectives.
Multicore interference happens when more than one processor core attempts simultaneous access to a shared resource, such as system memory, I/O, or the on-chip interconnect. To further ease compliance to CAST-32A, Green Hills provides bandwidth allocation and monitoring (BAM) functionality in INTEGRITY-178 tuMP that ensures that critical applications get their allocated access to shared resources in order to meet their required deadlines, significantly lowering integration and certification risk.
