DO-178C Compliant Drivers for Rugged XMC and VPX Graphics Cards

DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification was developed by the commercial avionics industry to create software guidelines for avionics software developers. Although ‘officially’ just that, a guideline, it quickly became a formal standard for developing avionics software systems.

Since its establishment there have been a number of iterations of the guideline. The first version of the document, DO-178, covered the basic avionics software lifecycle. Version two - DO-178A - added avionics software criticality level details and put emphasis on software component testing to measure and maintain quality. DO-178B expanded the avionics software quality requirements with continuous quality monitoring and testing in real-world conditions. At a relatively short 100 pages, DO-178B became the 'go-to' standard for a wide range of developers, making it quite broad in nature and requiring in-depth understanding of intent.

But it wasn't just necessary for flight products. DO-178B had a number of additional benefits, including higher reliability and consistency, greater re-usability, verifiable software quality, much lower lifecycle and maintenance costs, faster hardware integration and greater portability.

DO-178B was created to match the stringent development practices and technologies of its day, but it makes very little allowance for the latest development technologies, including formal methods, Model-Based Development (MBD), and the use of object-oriented technologies.

The DO-178C standard recognises this and was specifically written to help bring the certification of avionics software in line with these 21st-century technologies. DO-178C retains the core information from DO-178B, and updates it where necessary to consider the need for developers to begin testing, or verifying, early in the process. The single most significant aspect of DO-178C is the addition of three technology-specific legs under the “core document” inherited from DO-178B.

Tech Source provides rugged XMC and VPX graphics cards that are available with DO-178C compliant drivers for use in safety critial environments.

The Condor 4000 XMC Series products are leading edge XMC form factor, rugged graphics/video cards for use in applications that require very high-end rugged graphics and computational power.

Based on AMD’s Embedded Radeon™ E8860 discrete GPU, the Condor 4000 XMC Series products offer the highest level graphical and GPGPU performance available for the embedded and rugged market. Its built-in video decoder enables dual HD decoding of H.264, VC-1. MPEG4 and MPEG2 compressed video stream.

Based on AMD’s Radeon™ E8860 GPU, the Condor 4000 3U VPX Series offers ultra high graphics and GPGPU performance for defense (military), avionics and other rugged markets. The 3U VPX form factor allows for operation at full power (45W) because the 3U VPX form factor allows for improved cooling.  This board comes complete with VPX-REDI covers. 

 For more information please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email.