Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division will showcase a range of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based embedded solutions that combine its rugged open architecture board and mission computer hardware with FACE-conformant operating system (OS) and FACE-conformant application software at today’s 2018 U.S. Army FACE Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) in Huntsville, Ala.
In addition to the demonstration of the first working example of a FACE-conformant operating system (OS) and FACE-conformant software application running simultaneously on two completely different processor infrastructures (Intel and NXP Power Architecture) held in its own booth (Booth #22), Curtiss-Wright is also participating in technology demonstrations held in the booths of other leading FACE-conformant software vendors, including ENSCO, Green Hills Software (GHS), and Lynx Software Technologies.
The demonstration held in Curtiss-Wright’s booth features Harris Corporation’s popular FACE-conformant FliteScene Digital Moving Map software running on top of GHS’ industry-leading and FACE-conformant INTEGRITY-178 tuMP real-time multicore operating system. The COTS module hardware solutions showcased in the demonstration includes Curtiss-Wright’s NXP Power Architecture QorIQ Quad-core AltiVec-enabled T2080 processor-based VPX3-152, a DO-254 safety-certifiable 3U OpenVPX single board computer (SBC), and the VPX3-1258, a 4th Gen Intel Core i7 (Haswell) processor-based 3U OpenVPX SBC.
FACE-Conformant Multicore RTOS-based Mission Computer
In GHS’ (Booth #3), there will be a demonstration of a Curtiss-Wright Parvus DuraCOR 8042 mission computer running GHS’ FACE-conformant INTEGRITY-178 tuMP real-time multicore operating system. The DuraCOR 8042 is based on a quad-core (8-thread), 5th gen Intel Core i7 (Broadwell) processor with PCI Express (PCIe) Mini Card slots and a PCIe/104 bus architecture to support platform-specific add-on I/O module rapid integration with no/low NRE expense. The INTEGRITY-178 tuMP, the first true multicore operating system to conform to the FACE Technical Standard, is conformant to the FACE 2.1.1 Technical Standard. It conforms to both the FACE Safety Base and Security Profiles for the C, C++ and Ada programming languages. The RTOS has successfully met the DO-178 DAL A certification objectives multiple times across several different multicore SOC architectures, each of which featured a different core design. It is available for all of Curtiss-Wright’s DO-254 safety-certifiable products including its Power Architecture, Intel, and Arm-based SBCs.
Rapid Integration Framework: FACE and Crew Mission System (CMS) Upgrade Demo
In a demonstration of a Rapid Integration Framework solution, Lynx Software Technologies (Booth #33) is showcasing a FACE-aligned software and COTS hardware solution for upgrading the existing Crew Mission System (CMS) hardware. The CMS is designed to reside in the main cabin area of a helicopter and provide situational/mission related data, such as location, speed, and altitude to the Crew Chief. This demo will feature Curtiss-Wright’s Parvus DuraCOR 8042 mission computer and highlight Lynx’s LynxOS-178 RTOS and LynxSecure Separation Kernel. The demo shows how new software and hardware can be integrated into the CMS with minimal development effort and integration challenges. In this demo, the existing hypervisor is replaced with the LynxSecure Separation Kernel, and the CDS’s RTOS is replaced with the LynxOS-178 RTOS. The DuraCOR Mission Computer, located in Lynx’s booth, will host all of the CMS software. The demo also features Presagis, GE Aviation, Boeing, Lynx, RTI, and CDS. Displays located in the Presagis, GE Aviation, and Boeing booths will be connected to the DuraCOR 8042.
FACE-aligned ARINC 661 Cockpit Display System (CDS) Demo
In ENSCO Avionics’ Booth #38 there is a demonstration of a FACE-aligned solution for an ARINC 661-compliant Cockpit Display System (CDS). The demo, based on ENSCO’s IData Tool Suite, a platform-independent embedded graphical software solution, features Curtiss-Wright’s VPX3-131 single board computer and XMC-715 mezzanine graphics card. The operating system for this demo is Lynx Software Technologies’ LynxOS-178 RTOS. The demo will also use CoreAVI graphics drivers. This demo highlights the use of COTS solutions to reduce costs while enabling new technologies for a data-driven development environment.
