A leading Indian aerospace lab is the first to acquire Wind River’s Platform for Safety Critical ARINC 653 from Mistral. This marks the beginning of a new era of commercial aviation in India. New developments in hardware in the domestic aviation industry warranted the need for enabling multiple applications to share a single processor and memory. This meant that the execution time and memory space of each application needed to be protected from other applications in the system in order to guarantee that one cannot bring down another in the event of an application failure. This need saw the advent of the ARINC 653 based RTOS in India.

ARINC 653 is a standard for partitioning of computer resources in the time and space domains. The standard also specifies APIs for abstraction of the application from the underlying hardware and software and defines a standard interface between avionics application software and Real Time Operating System (RTOS).

Wind River’s Platform for Safety Critical ARINC 653 offers enhanced safety and architecture features that enable Aerospace and Defense (A&D) device manufacturers to develop and maintain safety-critical, standards-based, integrated modular applications faster and more reliably.

The platform also offers DO-178B certification evidence. The DO-178B standard defines the planning, development and test procedures for software deployed in aircrafts. With Platform for Safety Critical ARINC 653, manufacturers can certify various applications with different levels of criticality.

The Wind River Platform for Safety Critical ARINC 653 is used to power Boeing's 7E7 Dreamliner Common Core System - the backbone of the airplane's computers, networks and interfacing electronics. The 7E7 Common Core System is comprised of extremely complex device software with 80 to 100 applications running simultaneously. The ARINC 653 is therefore an extremely advanced and efficient standard designed for high-integrity embedded systems.

“Mistral fully understands the stringent norms in the Avionics of Civil Aviation and is proud to state that our partnership with Wind River has enabled us to introduce the ARINC 653 RTOS for civilian aircrafts in India, thereby revolutionizing the future of commercial aviation in India.” said Mujahid Alam, Vice President-Sales, Mistral Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

About Wind River
Wind River is the global leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO). Wind River enables companies to develop, run and manage device software faster, better, at lower cost and more reliably. Wind River platforms are pre-integrated, fully standardized, enterprise-wide development solutions. They reduce effort, cost and risk and optimize quality and reliability at all phases of the device software development process, from concept to deployed product.

Unveiled at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley (ESC) in San Jose, California in April this year, the OMAP2430 Starter Kit is an ideal software development and device prototyping platform for users to get started on their wireless/multimedia based application development.

The OMAP2430 OSK comes preloaded with Linux BSP, and includes tools for developers to begin application development immediately. The OSK has several features that will facilitate developers building next generation small form factor devices.

Priced at $1795, the OMAP Starter Kit can be purchased online from Mistral’s website. www.mistralsolutions.com/webstore

Linux BSP for the OMAP2430
Mistral has also released its OMAP2430 BSP on Linux®. The Linux BSP supports a wide range of modules and drivers. These include display, touch screen, keypad, NAND, audio, Ethernet & serial UART. It also includes ITBOK (Is the Board OK!), a Mistral proprietary Windows based Diagnostic and peripheral boot utility to help the developers to bootstrap the hardware without requiring an expensive JTAG tool.

“Our Starter Kit and BSP for the OMAP2430 is helping developers prototype and test their application well before their hardware is ready, helping them reduce development costs and time. Along with the OSK, we have also released the Linux kernel patch that is available to kernel hackers who would like to put our board through its paces.” said Samyeer Metrani, VP Product Development, Mistral Solutions. “We look forward to seeing our platform and BSP used as a launch pad for the development of the portable devices of tomorrow”.

Mistral is a broad market OMAP Technology Center (OTC) providing professional services in the areas of hardware board design, reference designs, driver development, board support packages, codecs and system integration on the OMAP™ platform. Mistral’s latest offerings on the OMAP2430 Platform are a testament to the quality of products and support available from Mistral.

For more information visit: http://www.mistralsolutions.com/OMAP2430

About OMAP Technology Centers
Independent OMAP Technology Centers provide development support by bringing together a variety of hardware, software and system integration expertise, giving device manufacturers and developers a single point of entry for OMAP development technologies. Located throughout the world, independent OMAP Technology Centers have the expertise necessary to get customers to market quickly with robust, power-efficient products, which use TI’s OMAP platform.

For information about the worldwide network of independent OMAP Technology Centers, visit http://www.omap.com/

DRDO, a research organization of the Indian Ministry of Defence, will be the first to acquire Curtiss Wright’s CHAMP AV-6 quad signal processor VPX engine and the VPX6-185 single board computer from Mistral. This marks the advent of the VPX technology in India and represents an important milestone in the Indian defense arena.

The military/aerospace sector has always been constrained with the need for systems with increased bandwidth and improved power provisioning. The development of the next-generation high-performance backplane architecture: VPX (VITA 46) addresses these requirements. Boards and systems based on the VPX standards redefine the limits of performance and ruggedization with unprecedented backplane I/O connectivity.

The new VPX standard breaks out from the traditional connector scheme of VMEbus to merge the latest in connector and packaging technology with the latest in bus and serial fabric technology. It uses an innovative connector system to deliver significantly greater signal density and electrical performance than is available with the VME64x architecture. VPX combines best-in-class technologies to assure a very long technology cycle similar to that of the original VMEbus solutions and is specifically designed to meet demanding military/aerospace applications.

“Mistral has been working closely with the Defense fraternity in helping them leverage the benefits of the innovative VPX technology.” stated Ramanan J. V., AGM - Systems Engineering, Mistral Solutions. “We initiated numerous technical discussions with key decision makers highlighting the need for adopting the latest VPX technology to overhaul their system performance and to achieve maximized systems longevity. The Defense industry’s response to the VPX technology has been extremely positive. Organisations are constantly engaging Mistral, not only as a COTS VPX supplier, but also as a consultant to use this technology successfully.”

Increased systems performance and ruggedization for mission-critical applications have been one of Mistral’s major objectives in addressing the needs of the defence sector. As an authorized distributor of Curtiss Wright products in India, Mistral has again been able to provide clients in India with innovative technology solutions - the VPX based Single Board Computers and Digital Signal Processing engines, thereby launching the new era of switch fabric-based embedded computing in the domestic market.

About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing

Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense, aerospace, commercial and industrial markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc. For more information about Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing visit www.cwcembedded.com.