Dr. Dobb's | DDC-I Releases a Pair of RTOSs

DDC-I Releases a Pair of RTOSs

Safety-critical real-time operating systems

November 17, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/ddc-i-releases-a-pair-of-rtoss/212100328

DDC-I has entered the real-time operating system (RTOS) market with a pair of safety-critical RTOSes. The first, known as Deos (short for "DDC-I Embedded Operating System") targets the high-end safety-critical market, with a focus on military and aerospace applications requiring safe operation and/or DO-178B Level A certification. The second RTOS, a microkernel known as the HeartOS, will target general embedded as well as low- to mid-range safety-critical applications.

Deos and HeartOS are based on technology developed at Honeywell and deployed on dozens of commercial and military aircraft. To enhance this technology, which represents hundreds of person-years of engineering and IP development, DDC-I has expanded its engineering staff and added core Honeywell engineers from the original Deos RTOS design team. The near-term roadmap includes enhanced tool support, new programming interfaces, and increased target support. DDC-I will also provide previously certified artifacts up to DO-178B Level A.

Deos is a safe, fast, memory-protected RTOS optimized for safety-critical applications that place a premium on reliability, real-time performance, testability, and formal certifiability. Featuring deterministic, real-time response, guaranteed resource availability, and a patented "slack" scheduling mechanism that achieves 100% CPU utilization, Deos is the only COTS certifiable time- and space- partitioned RTOS built from the ground up for safety-critical applications. Deos provides the easiest, lowest cost path of any COTS RTOS to DO-178B Level A certification, the highest level of safety criticality.

The HeartOS, scheduled for release in Q1 of 2009, is a POSIX-compliant, deterministic RTOS optimized for small- to medium-sized safety-critical applications with tight space and time constraints. Certifiable to DO-178B Level A, the HeartOS is highly configurable and scalable, features a compact, portable TCP/IP stack, and is available with a small footprint, POSIX-compliant journaling file system.

Development support for DDC-I's RTOS family includes DDC-I's Eclipse-based, OpenArbor Integrated Development Environment. Available with Ada, C/ C++, and RTSJ Java optimizing compilers, the mixed-language IDE features a color-coded source editor, project management support, automated build/make utilities, and a mixed-language, multi-window, symbolic debugger.