By Stephen Olsen

VxWorks 653 Multi-Core Edition passed an important milestone with the addition of a new architecture to the list of fully supported platforms.

Intel multi-core hardware has emerged over the last several years as a great choice for multiple programs that require increased computation power scaling across safe and secure applications in industries like aerospace and defense, industrial and transportation. VxWorks 653 Multi-Core Edition takes advantage of the advances in CPU technology provided by the Intel Architecture, while meeting the consolidation specifications for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) systems – ARINC 653.

VxWorks 653 has been driving standards and connecting customers, partners and a broad ecosystem of avionics suppliers. It is a single operating system that allows safe and non-safe applications to coexist by sharing the same platform with time and space separation.

The last two decades in retrospect

Let’s take a look at the last two decades to see how Wind River has been leading the way for the adoption of safe and secure solutions that transform businesses and help customers upgrade to the new software-defined era through virtualization, real-time performance and edge-to-cloud connectivity.

From the beginning, the Wind River story shows a rich heritage of certified platforms used as standard COTS platforms providing great flexibility and capabilities for the future of integrated modular avionics systems. Wind River released its first certifiable platform in 2000 – VxWorks Cert 5.4 released—platform for safety-critical DO-178B and 61508. Fast forward almost two decades later and Wind River continues to bring new capabilities to its safe and secure product portfolio.

2017 started off with the achievement of certified Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) conformance to the FACE Technical Standard Operating System Segment (OSS) Safety Base Profile. VxWorks 653 was the first and is still the only FACE operating system to achieve this industry standards conformance.

Later on, Wind River officially released the COTS certification evidence package for Multi-core IMA systems for VxWorks 653 Multi-core Edition on PowerPC and an initial release of VxWorks 653 on Intel Architecture.

At the end of the year Wind River was also recognized with the prestigious Military & Aerospace Electronics Innovation Awards for the second consecutive year for VxWorks 653 — a testament to the value and capabilities of this industry leading product.

What do a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and an Artesyn Embedded train controller have in common?

It comes as no surprise that since its release, VxWorks 653 has been proven successful in quite a few projects. From commercial airplanes like the Dreamliner, to helicopters and UAVs, it enables rapid integration of multiple application suppliers sharing an IMA compute platform, and aligns with the multi-vendor, role-based supply chain standard RTCA DO-297. With robust partitioning and RTCA DO-330-qualified development and verification tools it allows updating just parts of the system without the need for comprehensive system testing. These capabilities save our customer millions of dollars in test and certification work per year, and increase time-to-market and time-to-deployment. These capabilities are proven in more than 400 programs and more than 80 civilian and military aircraft.

Wind River’s goal is to provide software support for multiple architectures all enabled by a single software platform – VxWorks 653. VxWorks 653 Multi-Core Edition on Intel Architecture is the first multi-core release for this architecture bringing a proven safe and secure platform to industries that benefit from capabilities like hardware virtualization assist of advanced multi-core platforms and unmodified guest OS support.

To learn more about WxWorks 653 Multi-Core Edition on Intel Architecture, see the product overview or get in touch at +1-800-545-WIND.