Embedded Avionics

Curtiss-Wright, Green Hills Software, Harris Team for FACE Moving Map

By S.L. Fuller | November 17, 2017
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A team of Curtiss-Wright, Green Hills Software and Harris Corp. have integrated technologies to create a digital moving map solution. The new product is aligned with Power Architecture-based Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE).

The FACE Consortium represents a partnership between industry suppliers, government experts, academia and customers to provide avionics with an open-source environment for technical standards, best practices and solutions. Avionics put it simply in May: The FACE technical standard provides requirements for constructing avionics software. Conforming to these requirements ensures that software products are safe, secure and functional. Through its streamlined process, the FACE approach aims to lower software development and integration costs, and, by doing so, boost avionics abilities.

Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division collaborated with the other two companies to create the commercial-off-the-shelf-based system. It features Green Hills Integrity-178 time-variant unified multiprocessing multicore real-time operating system. That runs Harris’ FliteScene digital moving map software, powered by Curtiss-Wright’s VPX3-133 OpenVPX single board computer and VPX-716 graphics display module. According to Curtiss-Wright, the product is designed to ease and speed the integration of situational awareness and high performance digital mapping functions into embedded commercial and military avionics systems. With it, system architects can statically define when the VPX-133 SBC should deterministically execute the FliteScene application, and with which processor core (or cores), Curtiss-Wright said.

“We are excited, along with Harris and Green Hills Software, to deliver this FACE-aligned digital mapping solution to avionics system designers seeking Power Architecture-based deployable solutions,” said Lynn Bamford, SVP and general manager of Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division. “This fully integrated Power Architecture based solution eliminates the cost and design risk associated with deploying new digital map capabilities while delivering on the promise of the FACE open avionics standard to make software systems more robust, interoperable, portable and secure.”

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