DDC-I and Northrop Grumman Italia bundle DAL A safety platform for critical systems

DDC-I has announced a bundled safety-critical platform from Northrop Grumman Italia that pairs the NGI A53 Main Multi-Core Computing Unit single-board computer with the Deos real-time operating system. The credit card-sized package is aimed at speeding certification and deployment of avionics, drone, missile, CubeSat and other constrained safety-critical systems.

Why it matters: - The bundled platform is built to reduce the time and risk involved in certifying safety-critical computing systems. - The package combines hardware and software evidence for DO-178C and DO-254 at Design Assurance Level A, which matters for avionics and other high-assurance applications. - The platform is aimed at compute- and I/O-intensive systems where size, weight and power constraints are tight.

What happened: - DDC-I announced a DAL A safety-critical platform available from Northrup Grumman Italia that pairs the NGI A53 Main Multi-Core Computing Unit single-board computer with DDC-I’s Deos DO-178C real-time operating system. - The platform includes a board support package with DO-178C DAL A evidence and DO-254 DAL A artifacts. - DDC-I said the bundled system is designed to accelerate development, deployment and certification for drones, avionics, missiles, mission computers, CubeSats and other SWaP-constrained platforms.

The details: - The NGI MMCCU is a DO-254 and DO-178 safety-certifiable single-board computer in a credit card form factor. - The board uses an NXP Layerscape LS1043A ARM quad-core A53 processor. - A dedicated NGI FPGA handles advanced I/O functions. - Hardware includes 4 Gbytes of DDR memory, 512 Mbytes of NOR flash and a secure boot crypto device for key storage. - The MMCCU carries DO-254 artifacts up to DAL A and DO-178 artifacts up to DAL A for secure boot and loading. - The board includes Ethernet, ARINC 429, dual temperature sensors, UARTs, configurable discrete I/O, watchdog timers, SPI, QSPI, I2C, a real-time clock and an eMMC memory interface. - DDC-I Vice President of Marketing Gary Gilliland said the Deos/MMCCU platform is an out-of-the-box solution with a robust driver set and reusable DAL A evidence for both software and hardware. - DDC-I said that combination is intended to help Northrop Grumman and DDC-I customers develop, certify and deploy high-performance safety-critical avionics applications. - Deos uses cache partitioning, memory pools and safe scheduling to deliver higher CPU utilization than other certifiable safety-critical COTS RTOS products, according to DDC-I. - SafeMC extends Deos to multiple cores while preserving safety-critical task response and guaranteed execution time in line with AC/AMC 20-193 multi-core objectives. - Deos scales from small single-core applications to more complex multi-core deployments. - Deos is modular, and the same OS component software modules can be reused from one certifiable project to the next at the binary level. - The Deos DAL A linking loader lets OS binary components and artifacts travel separately, which supports reconfiguration with minimal impact on hardware, software and DO-178 recertification. - Deos device drivers run in user space rather than kernel space, so driver changes do not affect kernel certification.

Between the lines: - The announcement is as much about certification reuse as it is about raw compute performance. - By bundling hardware artifacts, software evidence and a preintegrated BSP, DDC-I and NGI are trying to remove a common barrier in safety-critical programs: repeated recertification work every time the platform changes. - The emphasis on multi-core safety shows how aerospace and defense developers are pushing toward more capable systems without giving up deterministic behavior.

What's next: - DDC-I and NGI will likely position the platform for customers building new or upgraded safety-critical avionics and mission systems. - The modular certification approach suggests future system changes may focus on reusing the existing evidence package instead of rebuilding it from scratch. - DDC-I continues to market Deos as a safety-critical RTOS for commercial, military, air, marine and space systems, with alignment to FACE, MOSA and PYRAMID initiatives.

The bottom line: - The Deos/MMCCU bundle is designed to give safety-critical developers a preverified path from hardware to certification, with less integration work and fewer recertification hurdles.