Wind River Helix Virtualisation Platform conforms to latest FACE technical standard, edition 3.0 safety base and security profiles
Judy Cerenzia of The Open Group
Wind River, a specialist in delivering software to critical infrastructure, has announced that Wind River Helix Virtualisation Platform has achieved conformance to the latest Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard, Edition 3.0.
The certification establishes Helix Platform conformance as an Operating System Segment (OSS) that supports the Safety Base and Security Profile.
“A member of The Open Group FACE Consortium since its inception and first to achieve conformance to the FACE Technical Standard OSS Safety Base Profile in 2017, this achievement further demonstrates Wind River’s ongoing work promoting innovation and rapid integration of portable capabilities across global defense programs,” says Ray Petty, vice president, aerospace and defense, Wind River.
“With nearly four decades of experience helping companies build safe, secure, and reliable computing systems, Wind River is committed to enhancing and bringing new capabilities to our portfolio for mission-critical commercial aircraft and military operations.”
Based on the award-winning VxWorks 653 technology foundation, which is also FACE conformant, Helix Platform is an adaptive software development environment for aerospace systems that enables support for multiple applications. It supports robust partitioning, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and RTCA DO-297 Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) considerations to reduce safety certification costs and accelerate time to deployment.
It includes POSIX and ARINC 653 support, including ARINC 653 Part 1 Supplement 4 and Supplement 5, with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) RTCA DO-178C DAL A certification evidence available. Helix Platform provides a real-time, embedded, Type 1 hypervisor that runs on Arm or x86 multi-core processors. Applications can be legacy or implement new capability, based on industry standards such as the FACE Technical Standard, or on operating systems such as Linux, VxWorks, and others.
Software conformant with the FACE Technical Standard can be used—and most importantly, easily reused—by suppliers and integrators of avionics systems across different global defense programs and aircraft. With FACE conformance, Helix Platform now helps manufacturers and military services lower procurement costs, as well as avoid and prevent supplier lock-in. Additionally, it enables manufacturers to easily and rapidly integrate ARINC 653 and POSIX applications software with other FACE portable software components.
“I am very pleased to congratulate Wind River on achieving FACE Conformance for their Helix Platform”, says Judy Cerenzia, The Open Group director of forum operations. “This latest addition further populates the FACE Registry with the best-in-class solutions for our global warfighters and next-generation military platforms.”
Wind River worked with its FACE verification authority, TES-SAVI, to complete the rigorous FACE certification conformance testing for Helix Platform. The company has a rich heritage of certified platforms used as standard COTS components providing great flexibility and capabilities for the future of IMA systems.
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