Wind River VxWorks 653 Certification Solution Reaches New Milestone and Achieves Top Honors

For almost two decades, Wind River has supplied commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) certification evidence to hundreds of programs, accelerating our customers’ path to achieving FAA RTCA DO-178B / DO-178C, EUROCAE ED-12B / ED-12C, MIL STD, and driving a variety of industrial designs using IEC 61508 as a baseline certification standard.

I’m excited to announce that one of these safety and security certification solutions, VxWorks 653, has reached a new milestone – it is now used in over 400 projects by over 200 customers in over 80 aircraft.  VxWorks 653 is the leading ARINC 653 time and space application executive that has powered the Airbus Helicopters H175 and H145, Airbus Military A330 MRTT, Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing 767 Tanker, Boeing P-8A Poseidon, Lockheed Martin C-130T, and Northrop Grumman UH-60V Blackhawk Helicopter.

Customers select VxWorks 653 because its COTS certification evidence reduces program risk.  Furthermore, its architecture is ideal for complex multi-supplier integrated modular avionics (IMA) platforms solutions due to its independent supplier build environment and robust partitioning that constrains testing on a consolidated IMA platform to the scope of changed application and configuration software.

I’m also very pleased to share that VxWorks 653 has received top honors in the ‘Military & Aerospace Electronics and Intelligent Aerospace Technology Innovation Awards’, a testament to the product’s industry-leading innovative capabilities and features. See award video here.

VxWorks 653 is just one Wind River success story on the certification front. Many aircraft programs and industrial control systems still use a federated system architecture, where a robust real-time operating system (RTOS) fits the system requirement perfectly.  In this case, VxWorks Cert and VxWorks Safety Profile are ideal solutions.  These platforms all offer COTS certification evidence and the range of certification standards is expanded to include EN 50128, IEC 61508, IEC 26262 and other industrial safety certification derivatives.

With this comprehensive family of robust RTOSs coupled with COTS certification evidence packages, Wind River’s combined federated/IMA track record of safety solutions are now used in more than 500 projects by over 300 customers in over 90 aircraft. This is a remarkable accomplishment that Wind River is very proud to claim.

And with new offerings for functional safety coming to market in the future, 2017 should be a pivotal year for removing risk and accelerating time to certification for safety engineers worldwide.