News & Press

Richland Technologies Announces Safety-Critical OpenGL Graphics Drivers Supporting Advanced Multicore Processing Capabilities of Green Hills Software's INTEGRITY-178 tuMP Real-Time Operating System

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LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — April 14, 2015 — Richland Technologies, innovator in the development and certification of high performance, safety-critical, embedded computing systems for the aviation industry, today announces the availability of its DO-178C certifiable real-time graphics libraries (RTGL). Initially supporting OpenGL APIs on the AMD E8860 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the RTGL libraries have been designed with platform portability and ease of certification in mind. They offer the flexibility to target a range of devices, from high-end COTS graphics processors (like the E8860), to rendering graphics solely on the CPU, or alternatively to control proprietary graphics IP cores hosted in an FPGA.

Richland Technologies has collaborated closely with Green Hills Software, the proven worldwide leader in FAA/EASA and NSA-certified high-assurance operating systems, to offer the aviation industry's first DO-178C certifiable graphics drivers supporting multicore processor architectures. The features of the INTEGRITY®-178 tuMP™ (Time-Variant Unified Multi-Processing) RTOS significantly improves the flexibility in how processor cores can be used to deterministically and safely render high performance graphics applications. Green Hills Software's tuMP architecture is referred to as "unified" in that a common OS controls the scheduling of all cores and the overall communications between applications. It retains all AMP and SMP scheduling capabilities while resolving their significant limitations. The tuMP implementation has been shipping to Green Hills aerospace and defense customers for more than four years and is an update to Green Hills Software's proven INTEGRITY-178 single-core product, thus preserving 14 years of product service history and certification pedigree.

"The DO-178C and DO-254 certification of graphics systems for avionics is challenging and problematic due to the rapidly increasing complexity of both the GPUs and the main system processors," says Dave Simpson, managing director of Richland Technologies. "Our comprehensive experience in developing and certifying video and display systems led us to the conclusion that there is no credible solution to the problem available in the marketplace today. We are excited to collaborate with Green Hills Software to offer high performance and DO-178C certifiable graphics solutions supporting the AMD E8860 GPU and multicore CPU architectures based on INTEGRITY-178 tuMP."

"Having worked with Richland Technologies in the past on other INTEGRITY-178 tuMP related projects, we are excited to be partnering with such a credible and experienced avionics organization, one that can provide high assurance graphics solutions to our common avionics customers," said Dan O'Dowd, founder and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software. "Although there are many software vendors in the marketplace that claim to have "certifiable" software solutions, we know that Richland Technologies has the DO-178B/C and DO-254 certification pedigree, in-house engineering resources and the commitment necessary to meet the highest levels of software and hardware assurance in the aviation industry."

The collaboration between Richland Technologies and Green Hills Software has resulted in a flight-critical graphics and display solution for modern multicore architectures that uniquely enables Richland's RTGL libraries to deterministically execute on the INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS' user-defined groupings of cores (called affinity groups) that can also be permitted to vary over time. These RTGL affinity groups are then scheduled independently of other sets of end-user application affinity groups, permitting user-defined core assignment and execution time-lines that correspond to the display's operational requirements (yet also permitting other sets of affinity groups to be developed that can make use of time windows where cores and partition time windows are not being utilized). Taking advantage of the tuMP Multiple Schedules feature further extends Richland's RTGL capabilities by permitting developers to tailor their display applications and processor time resources based on requirements for multiple operational modes for a display system (e.g. flight and combat phase).

Richland Technologies RTGL libraries for the E8860 are available immediately. Please contact info@richlandtechnnologies.com for more information.

About Richland Technologies

Richland Technologies (RTL) is an innovator in the field of high performance, safety critical and cost effective embedded systems for the commercial and defense aviation industries. RTL leverages a creative portfolio of disruptive technologies to make leading edge applications available to cost sensitive pilots and system operators. RTL offers a comprehensive portfolio of engineering and management services focused on projects requiring DO-178B/C and DO-254 certification.

About Green Hills Software

Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the largest independent vendor of embedded development solutions. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178B RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL 6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.

Green Hills, the Green Hills logo, MULTI, INTEGRITY, AdaMULTI, INTEGRITY-178 and tuMP are trademarks or registered trademarks of Green Hills Software in the U.S. and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.