BlackBerry has announced that its QNX OS for Safety 2.2 will be certified to the highest Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 4, of the functional safety standard for the railway industry – EN 50128 from the European Electrotechnical Committee for Standardization (CENELEC).
With strong adoption across multiple industries including industrial controls, automotive and medical applications, QNX OS for Safety 2.2 will provide the rail industry with a safe, secure and trusted foundation to develop systems that meet stringent international safety and security requirements.
This certification is in response to the company’s growing rail business, whose recent customer wins include sTraffic, South Korea’s leading fit-for-purpose, solution developer for transportation infrastructure systems along with Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), the Portuguese railway infrastructure manager.
“Rail transportation is growing rapidly as trends such as urbanization, green energy, digitalization, and autonomous rail technology drive demand for modern and smart railway systems,” said Grant Courville, VP, Products and Strategy at BlackBerry QNX.
“Rail manufacturers and suppliers know they can trust BlackBerry QNX to provide the software building blocks for their robust, safe and secure embedded systems.
Gaining the EN 50128 certification will be additional affirmation for our best-in-class technology as we look to further grow our leadership position within an industry that is laying the track for software-driven infrastructure investments at feverish pace, creating countless opportunities for trusted suppliers like ourselves.”
BlackBerry QNX works closely with its rail partners to deliver the expertise and technologies needed to develop safe, secure mission critical systems that need to be supported over long product life cycles.
The company provides time-tested and trusted foundation software, which includes a deterministic microkernel real-time operating system (RTOS) and a hypervisor, and their safety-certified variants, along with other safety-certified products such as QNX Hypervisor for Safety, QNX Black Channel Communications Technology, middleware, and cybersecurity solutions, all purpose-built for embedded systems.
“With worldwide supply chain disruptions across many traditional transport modes, the rail industry is poised for massive growth and thus the certification of the QNX OS for Safety to the key railway functional safety standard could not have come at a better time,” said Adhish Luitel, Senior Analyst at ABI Research.
“Because the software-defined railway system is a pillar of this growth, functional safety will be the foundation. BlackBerry QNX is well positioned to serve a massive need for safety-certified software for all types of railway systems as the market embraces innovations like autonomous and high-speed rail, which will be critical to meet the anticipated demand for sophisticated rail transport across the globe.”
Companies interested in learning more about the benefits of QNX OS for Safety 2.2 are encouraged to visit the BlackBerry QNX booth (#814) at RSSI C&S Exhibition from May 16 – 18, 2022 in Kansas City.
