Lafayette, Colorado — June 16, 2010 — Validated Software Corporation (VSC), the leader in affordable safety-critical software certification solutions for real-time and embedded operating systems (RTOS), announced today that their Micrium uC/OS-based line of Validation Suites now supports Texas Instruments’ TMS320C64xx family of Digital Signal Processors (DSP).
Micrium’s uC/OS is utilized extensively in safety-critical equipment, especially those that incorporate DSPs in medical, avionics, transportation, manufacturing and building automation. The benefits of using µC/OS with a DSP are many—improved programming model, better resource utilization, increased portability, high-quality—and it is extremely affordable. The other reason for its success in safety-critical equipment is the Validation Suite support provided by Validated Software.
All software running in a safety critical device must adhere to standards governing the device development process. Commonly called “certification”, the process of proving software compliance with a development standard is rigorous, time-consuming, and expensive. Validation Suites aid in the certification process by eliminating the burden of the uC/OS portion of the certification effort.
Each Validation Suite is specific to a market, a standard, a processor, and a compiler and is customized for each customer’s unique environment. Validation Suites provide all the requirements, design, process, and other documentation required as evidence of compliance with the specified standard. Validation Suites also contain meticulous structural analysis, code coverage, unit testing, and integration testing. All runtime results and testing are based on the customer’s target hardware and tool setup; the runtime and testing results are provided in trace matrix format. The result is a turnkey, submission ready certification package that includes everything required to demonstrate uC/OS compliance with a particular standard. The development team does not have to do a thing.
“The safety-critical software development and certification process is expensive and time consuming, on the order of $150 or more per line of code.” says Jean J. Labrosse, President of Micrium. “Just uC/OS and one Validation Suite alone represent 48 man-months and more than $750,000 of development dollars. When one considers adding additional Validation Suite supported uC/OS products such as uC/OS-MMU, uC/File System, and uC/TCP-IP, the positive impact to budget and schedule when compared to alternatives is nothing less than staggering.”
Safety-critical standards differ by industry. Current Validation Suite support for TI’s DSPs covers the dominant international software standards:
– RTCA DO-178B Level A for software used in airborne avionics
– RTCA DO-278 Level AL1 for software used in ground based avionics
– IEC-62304 Class C, and FDA/CDRH 510K/PMA Class III for software used in Medical equipment
– IEC-61508 SIL 3 for software used in Industrial automation and control systems
– CENELEC EN-50128 SIL 4 for software used in Railway systems and equipment
With its modular component design, Validation Suites are not limited to the industries listed above. They can be used to satisfy the common requirements of other markets.
“The availability of our Validation Suites for TI DSPs mitigates a great amount of risk for those needing to certify their final product,” says Scott Nowell, President of Validated Software. “Knowledge of a certifiable solution, fixed, low upfront pricing, and the fact that it shaves four or more man-years off a schedule provides a great deal of comfort for those using our Validation Suites”.
With the addition of the TMS320C64xx family, VSC can provide fast, turnkey uC/OS certification solutions for TI’s TMS320C28xx, TMS320C55xx, TMS320C62xx, and TMS320C64xx DSPs. Turnkey Validation Suites can be delivered in as little as thirty days.
About Validated Software:
Validated Software Corporation provides FAA, FDA, and IEC compliant validation and verification products for software components used in safety-critical systems for leading aerospace, medical, industrial, and nuclear control companies. VSC also provides platform software, board support packages (BSPs), custom test suites and solutions for proprietary software used in safety-critical systems. For more information about this exciting product line, visit us on the web at: www.ValidatedSoftware.Com
Media Contact:
Todd Brian
303-531-5290
Email: [email protected]
About Micrium:
Micrium provides the highest quality embedded software components by way of cleanest source code, unsurpassed documentation, and customer support. Starting with Micrium’s flagship product, uC/OS through its complete line of software, Micrium shortens time to market throughout all product development cycles and builds products that address today’s increased design complexity. For additional information, visit: www.Micrium.com.