DO-178B provides the aviation community with guidelines for developing software for airborne systems and equipment that complies with accepted airworthiness requirements. Of the five levels of DO-178B certification, level A is the most stringent level. The effort required to show compliance with the certification requirements for DO-178B is based on the associated failure condition category for each level, where failure for level A would result in a Catastrophic Failure condition, which would prevent continued safe flight and landing of the aircraft.

"Over the past 6 years, Green Hills Software has become the industry leader in embedded Ada 95 software development tools for high-integrity mission critical systems," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "During this time we have found that with the increased throughput capacity of modern RISC processors, there is a demand for an Ada 95 run-time system that satisfies safety-critical requirements while simultaneously supporting the features found in many advanced operating systems targeting state-of-the-art RISC processors. There is a need for a commercial system that permits multiple applications at different safety levels to operate on the same processor."

Carbone continues, "We have evaluated the current RTOS and Ada run-time systems available today. Our analysis has shown that several vendors offer limited safety-critical solutions, either a real-time operating system with memory protection designed from the ground up for C/C++, or a basic kernel-mode Ada run-time system. The combination of a secure memory-protected RTOS and Ada 95 runtime that has been designed, optimized and integrated together with respect to safety-critical Ada requirements does not exist."

A secure memory-protected RTOS and Ada run-time system are the cornerstones of a safety-critical architecture consisting of multiple applications at different safety levels. In meeting the highest level of certification, Level A, Green Hills Software's solution will support any mix of Ada 95/C/C++ applications with respect to safety level, along with the protection necessary to guarantee performance of the highest level application in the architecture.

INTEGRITY-178B is the certifiable core of Green Hills' current INTEGRITY product. INTEGRITY has been engineered to provide security and determinism from the ground up. At the lowest level, the kernel is protected from malicious access through its object-oriented design and access verification. Traditional kernel access problems such as invalid kernel addresses and invalid system call parameters are eliminated by the kernel's state-of-the-art design. The kernel design guarantees bounded computation times by eliminating features such as dynamic memory allocation and heuristic scheduling. Underlying hardware mechanisms are used to provide full system memory protection of all system components, including user applications, device drivers, and inter-task communications. Clocks and Timers are protected with access permissions and implemented entirely in software.

"With our single-vendor solution, Green Hills expects to be the premier provider for safety-critical systems solutions," remarked John Carbone. "The design requirements of our products align perfectly with safety-critical requirements, namely deterministic behavior, memory protection, and mixed language support."

Due to DO-178B standards, both the RTOS and Ada 95 run-time system must be certified as part of the entire safety-critical system. A two-vendor solution for these tightly integrated products would present additional challenges to certification, including the necessary life cycle data of the RTOS to support the Ada 95 run-time system. This is in addition to the normal issues involved with managing multiple vendors. Green Hills will offer a "one-stop shop" solution for development tools, including an integrated compiler/debugger, a memory protected RTOS, an Ada 95 run-time system, DO-178B level A certification data, and complete technical support.

With a product line that also includes robust Ada 95/C/C++ embedded compiler and debugger technology, Green Hills offers a unique single vendor solution for a DO-178B Level A compliant RTOS/Ada 95 run-time system. The availability of Green Hills' INTEGRITY-178B certification package will make Green Hills Software the only commercial supplier offering a tightly integrated combination of a Secure Memory Protected RTOS and Ada 95 runtime system for multi level DO-178B applications.

More on Green Hills Software

Incorporated in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc., is a leading supplier of software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills offers a family of highly optimizing Ada 95, C, C++, FORTRAN and Pascal compilers, a real-time operating system (INTEGRITY), and a software development environment known as AdaMULTI that automates the compile-edit-build-debug cycle by integrating advanced facilities such as an RTOS-aware source-level debugger, profiler, program builder, compiler and source code control system.

Green Hills' tools support all major advanced microprocessor families and target environments, including target simulators, ROM Monitors, other commercial and home grown real-time operating systems (RTOS) such as VxWorks, and in-circuit emulators (ICE).

Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA., and has offices in Lexington, MA., Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Palm Harbor, FL, Denver, CO, Scotts Valley, CA, Cupertino, CA, San Clemente, CA, Los Angeles, CA, Kent, U.K., Amsterdam, Netherlands, Munich, Germany and Paris, France. For sales information on Green Hills Software's Ada 95 products, please call 1-727-781-4909 or email inquiries to ada-sales@ghs.com.