BlackBerry and WITTENSTEIN high integrity systems (WHIS) today announced a new embedded software platform that enables the development of safety-certified and mission-critical applications on heterogenous system-on-chip (SoC) processors.
As safety-critical systems within applications such as cars, medical robots and nuclear power plants become more autonomous, the development complexity increases, requiring a combination of both MCU and MPU-based processors.
By integrating the BlackBerry QNX and WHIS operating systems (OSs) and development toolkits, system designers can now take full advantage of heterogenous multicore SoCs containing application cores and highly-specialised cores in safety-critical systems.
The new solution builds on the safety legacy of WHIS’s SAFERTOS, the QNX Neutrino Realtime Operating System (RTOS) and the QNX Momentics Tool Suite to both reduce risk as well as certification costs.
The solution enables developers to leverage safe, secure inter-processor communication between QNX Neutrino, QNX OS for Safety and SAFERTOS®, and build highly reliable, mixed-criticality, safety systems.
Both operating systems have been certified to ISO26262 ASIL D for Automotive Applications and IEC 61508 SIL 3 levels for Industrial Automation – offering a proven foundation on which to base future product designs.
“Any solution must go well beyond simply offering two complementary operating systems and toolchains,” said Andrew Longhurst, Business Development Manager, WHIS.
“By working so closely together on this, our solution benefits from the expertise of both WHIS and BlackBerry, resulting in an environment that allows developers to create safety certified, mission-critical applications while optimizing the use of these heterogeneous processing elements.”
QNX Momentics provides complete state and data information across ARM Cortex processors including Cortex A, Cortex R and Cortex M cores. In addition, the QNX Momentics GDB based source level debugger allows developers to:
- Concurrently debug multiple applications coded in C and C++
across heterogeneous ARM cores - Debug multi-threaded applications with independent tracking for each thread and trace control from thread to thread
- Debug multiple processes distributed across multiple CPUs / cores and trace execution paths from one CPU to another
- Dynamically attach the debugger to any running proc
A reference target image is provided for evaluation purposes, proof of concept work and as a starting point for your development project. The image seamlessly integrates both QNX Neutrino and SAFERTOS as well as safe, secure inter-processor communication software for messaging between the two operating systems, sample applications, startup scripts, and development utilities.
Development teams can migrate to QNX OS for Safety, the safety certified version of our operating system that maintains full API compatibility with QNX Neutrino. Similarly, teams can prototype using FreeRTOS and convert to SAFERTOS at the start of formal development.
“Through our partnership with WITTENSTEIN, BlackBerry continues to expand its portfolio of embedded software solutions that allow our customers to develop mission-critical embedded systems that require safety, reliability and security, whether that’s a vehicle, train or traffic light.” said John Wall, Senior Vice President and Co-Head of BlackBerry Technology Solutions, BlackBerry.
“This new integrated solution supports a unified development environment tool chain, an efficient inter-processor communication capability, and a multi-level, policy-driven, security model that helps guard against system malfunctions, malware and cyber-attacks.”
Evaluation software can be obtained under license from either Blackberry QNX or WHIS by contacting your local sales representative.
