Wind River expands hardware support for VxWorks 653 for integrated modular avionics systems

BANGALORE, INDIA: Wind River announced the immediate availability of the latest VxWorks 653 Platform, Wind River's real-time operating system for controlling complex, safety-critical ARINC 653 Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) systems.

The new release of VxWorks 653 builds on VxWorks 653’s existing support for the Freescale e600 Power Architecture, with new board support packages (BSPs) for the Curtiss-Wright Controls VPX6-185 and the Wind River SBC8641D boards, and extends hardware support to Intel 32-bit processor architectures, including a BSP for the GE Intelligent Platforms V7768 board. Additionally, VxWorks 653 Platform now provides a new power-fail safe DO-178B file system.

VxWorks 653 is an ARINC 653, real-time operating system for safety-critical Integrated Modular Avionics platforms, used in over 180 subsystems by over 100 customers worldwide for more than 40 airframes, including the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

VxWorks 653 implements a strict two-level time and space scheduling and separation environment that supports the deployment of applications at different DO-178B safety levels on a single instance of silicon with very high performance and very low jitter.

VxWorks 653 also includes DO-178B qualified development tools that allow the rapid insertion of new software modules into a shared avionics platform without forcing a re-test of the entire environment, enabling high levels of integration and system refresh.

“Our collaboration with Wind River to develop a new board support package for our VPX6-185 board demonstrates further commitment to support our mutual aerospace and defense customers,” said Lynn Patterson, vice president and general manager, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “Together, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing and Wind River deliver proven commercial off-the-shelf solutions for safety critical applications that can help customers enjoy decreased development time and costs.”

"In addition to meeting the rigorous safety requirements of the avionics industry, we are also committed to helping our customers reduce costs and development cycles," said Peter Cavill, general manager, Military & Aerospace Products, GE Intelligent Platforms. "By working together with Wind River and its VxWorks 653 Platform, we can provide our customers with the power and reliability needed to meet the stringent requirements of the industry, while helping them complete projects on time, realize cost savings and bring solutions to market faster."

Wind River is committed to enhancing its proven ARINC 653 operating system to continue to serve the needs of the avionics market. Key features of the latest VxWorks 653 Platform release include:

* Hardware support for Power Architecture (PowerPC) broadened to include a BSP for the Curtiss-Wright Controls VPX6-185 MPC8641D-based board.

* Hardware support extended to Intel 32-bit processor architectures, specifically for Intel Core 2 and Celeron processors, with BSP support for the GE Intelligent Platforms V7768 board.

* DO-178B File System, a power-fail safe file system ready for use in systems requiring DO-178B Level A certification. It can be used from every application partition in an IMA system, and is supported by a range of devices. The file system is an optional, add-on component, further enhancing the development capabilities of VxWorks 653 for customers and increasing their development efficiency.

* Advanced project and workflow support in Wind River Workbench that improves the ease of usability of VxWorks 653 for customers when creating, configuring and building time- and space-partitioned VxWorks 653 projects.

* Improved DO-178B Network Stack support, through the inclusion of TCP, IGMPv1, and multicast support with the UDP/IPv4 network stack.

All VxWorks 653 runtime components from prior releases, including the DO-178B TCP/IP network stack, are supported with an extensive set of RTCA DO‑178B and EUROCAE ED-12B Level A commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) certification evidence.

“Providing customers with choice in hardware and software allows them to create solutions that can deliver better performance-to-cost ratios depending on their specific projects; it also helps to decrease overall operating expenditures,” said Marc Brown, vice president, Marketing and Strategy, VxWorks Products, Wind River.

“By working with industry leaders such as Curtiss-Wright Controls and GE Intelligent Platforms, we are helping customers realize efficiencies by using commercial off-the-shelf hardware solutions and the newly-enhanced capabilities of VxWorks 653 in their avionics systems.”

The VxWorks 653 Platform, version 2.3, is immediately available to customers.