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Safety & Certification

Safety & Certification

RTCA DO-178/EUROCAE ED-12 Qualifiable / Certifiable Solutions

Overview
Safety and mission critical software for aircraft applications

Safety is the first concern for every phase of production when building commercial or military airplanes. There is no margin of error; precision is critical.

The guidance for the development cycle of any software embedded in airborne equipment are among the most stringent for software development in the world. Every line of code embedded in any airborne system must be tested and verified and must conform to rigorous guidelines of accuracy, consistency, verifiability, and compatibility.

As a result, the certification processes associated with embedded code production caused tremendous overhead for avionics developers.

Presagis certification kits drastically reduce the effort necessary to achieve DO-178 certification in safety-critical applications such as cockpit graphics. They eliminate time-consuming tasks representing hundreds of person-years effort and more than 35 thousand files. System engineers can focus on system behavior and testing, while the kit includes the evidence needed for much lower-level detail.

Available for both conventional and ARINC 661-based systems.

Benefits of Qualifiable Tools

DO-178C Development ProcessTools for DO-178C/ED-12C certification can be categorized as either:

  1. Development tools that will produce code that will fly in the aircraft or
  2. Verification tools that will be used as part of the certification process to verify or check steps but will not produce code that will fly in the aircraft.

DO-178C/ED-12C states that the qualification of a tool is necessary when processes of DO-178C/ED-12C certification are eliminated, reduced, or automated. Tool qualification requires demonstrating a tool’s conformance with DO-178C/ED-12C in the same way that the developer’s end product is to be certified.

Concerning the qualification of software development tools, DO-178C/ED-12C goes further to state that the development processes for such tools should satisfy the same objectives as the software development processes for airborne software. As a result, the software level assigned to the tool should be the same as the level for the airborne software that it produces.

The main advantage of using a qualified tool is that you can automate or reduce the level of effort spent on certification, and these reductions can be achieved only by using “qualifiable” development tools. Using non-qualifiable tools will not reduce the effort of final certification because you will be forced to undertake all of the documentation and testing as if no tool had been used, a process that is both time consuming and costly.

The benefits of working with VAPS XT-178 & VAPS QCG
  • Rapid prototyping with VAPS XT allows you to easily model graphics and generate executables.
  • Iterate HMI designs with ease as you send multiple HMIs and revisions to suppliers.
  • Reduces the complexity of code generation.
  • Automation means fewer specialized skills.
  • Create once and then reuse VAPS XT-178 and VAPS QCG to port across multiple HMIs.
Software Tools

Both VAPS XT-178 for C++ coded applications and VAPS QCG for C-coded applications from Presagis have been developed to conform to DO-178/ED-12 as a development tool and are thus qualifiable. DO-178/ED-12 stipulates that tools can only be qualified on a given project, and VAPS QCG has been qualified on a number of projects using the VAPS QCG Certification Kit, while VAPS XT-178 was qualified on programs using the VAPS XT-178 Certification kit.

With VAPS XT-178 and VAPS QCG, a user can automate a number of processes and reduce the level of effort spent on certification. Some of our customers gave us feedback that they were able to achieve time savings of up to 70-80% across an entire project. The time savings included factors such as, the number of engineers working on the project, developer experience, and the complexity of the actual application being built.

Turn-key Solutions
Presagis technical services can provide you with turn-key solutions for your Certification needs.

Issues related to graphics performance and optimization could be difficult to pinpoint and resolve, particularly when it involved the collaboration of several components from different vendors. Systems integrators require rapid response and timely fixes for any issues they may face when developing their next generation embedded platforms.

Presagis offers HMI modeling tool and software that integrates effectively with graphic drivers, operating systems, CPUs and many different types of GPUs, including those provided by Intel, S3 Graphics and NVIDIA. Furthermore, Presagis offers you turnkey solutions that perform the integration for you.

Our turnkey solutions allow for:

  • Ease of integration. Integration of the graphics stack is tricky and subject to a myriad of possible problems. We can perform driver integration to give you the peace of mind of an integrated stack creates and thus creating fewer opportunities for these problems to occur and provide a higher chance for easy success of integration.
  • Efficiency. A well-thought out integrated stack uses resources, including CPU, GPU and memory more efficiently than discrete components that are developed and integrated separately.
  • Ease of certification. When you let Presagis perform the integration, there is a lower chance that issues encountered during certification will include a mismatch of requirements between the HMI and drivers.
  • Provide the test evidence on your hardware platform.