Aonix Ports Deterministic Virtual Machine to PikeOS

Combined solution improves portability of military and aerospace applications.

Aonix released PERC Ultra 5.1 cross development and target support on Sysgo’s PikeOS 2.2 real-time operating system. PERC Ultra support of the PikeOS POSIX PSE52 profile provides a solution for the increasing need for portability across multiple operating systems as industries such as military and aerospace, transportation, telecommunications, automotive and industrial automation, face the massive challenge of maintaining legacy systems. The deterministic behavior and real-time performance of Aonix’s PERC Ultra meets the stringent requirements of these applications and enables developers to apply Java’s portability to their modernizing efforts. 

Because of the POSIX interface, the PERC Ultra-PikeOS solution is particularly attractive for applications requiring scalability and portability. The POSIX PSE52 profile adds asynchronous IO and socket communications—features that Java programmers need to design effective Standard Edition Java™ embedded and real-time applications. 

Thanks to Eclipse plug-ins in both PERC Ultra and PikeOS, Aonix and Sysgo also provide maximum flexibility to developers. With the large-scale, complex applications common in safety-critical space, applications often involve diverse design, development and test tools. The Eclipse environment provides a common framework and development platform, reducing the learning curve and offering developers the widest variety of tools possible. 

 “PERC Ultra has extended the portability of the POSIX interface wonderfully for a number of joint customer applications,” noted Jacques Brygier, marketing vice president at Sysgo. “The speed and real-time behavior of PERC has enabled our customers to update legacy code and bring together multiple execution environments often based on more than one real-time operating system. And, thanks to our mutual support of Eclipse, customers are able to enjoy a large breadth of tool support and flexibility.”

“The need to reduce cost and ongoing maintenance of software has created a drive to modernize legacy code,” confirmed Gary Cato, Aonix director of marketing. “With PERC Ultra ported to PikeOS, application developers can introduce the Java benefits of portability and ease of maintenance throughout their code. We look forward to continuing our joint efforts as we extend our current offerings into the multi-partitioned space.”

Efforts to integrate a multi-partitioned solution are well underway. Chosen to participate in DIANA, an European Community project chartered to modernize the tools and execution environments used in hard real-time and safety-certifiable avionics systems, Aonix and Sysgo are already working toward extending the portable operating system interface to meet the ARINC-653 standard, a multi-partition execution environment. The DIANA project will develop architecture, methodologies and concepts that reduce aircraft development and operating costs, enable faster upgrade and replacement of avionics applications, and reduce onboard weight through better use of computational resources. The DIANA project has chosen PERC Ultra, PERC Pico and PikeOS as essential components to the modular electronics platform under development.

ObjectAda Full Standard Ada Runtime Executes atop VxWorks 6.6.

Aonix announced the release of ObjectAda® 8.4 for Windows, targeting PowerPC embedded and real-time systems running the Wind River VxWorks 6.6 real-time operating system (RTOS). This is the first ObjectAda release supporting full Ada tasking atop VxWorks 6.6 via Real-Time Processes (RTP). 

ObjectAda for VxWorks leverages Wind River Workbench, an Eclipse-based development environment providing developers access to the broad range of tools available through the Eclipse framework. With support for multiple operating systems, architectures and programming languages, ObjectAda for VxWorks provides the flexibility to standardize on a single development framework. Users also have the option to utilize ObjectAda’s standard graphical or command-line interface. The ObjectAda compilation system is comprised of an integrated language-sensitive editor, source-code browser, compiler with industry-leading compilation speed, debugger and full library manager. 

Embedded systems development often begins without target hardware in hand. In the absence of a PowerPC execution platform, VxSim, a target simulation facility supplied in the VxWorks distribution, can perform initial application execution and testing direct from the Intel/Windows host development platform. This is especially cost-efficient when multiple developers vie for access to expensive and scarce target hardware testing cycles.

“Ada development is a strong aerospace and defense requirement,” said Rob Hoffman, vice president and general manager for Aerospace and Defense at Wind River. “Continued support and development of systems can often span decades and we’re pleased to have up-to-date and well-integrated solutions for our customers.”

“Demand for Ada products has remained remarkably strong, even in the face of current economic uncertainty,” commented Gary Cato, Aonix director of marketing. “Our traditional customers are looking for ways to modernize or upgrade their applications in cost-effective ways. The new release of ObjectAda Real-Time for VxWorks 6.6 provides a great vehicle to achieve these objectives. ”

Aonix Announces PERC® Java Virtual Machine for VxWorks MILS Platform

Today’s world has dramatically changed the way we think about secure systems and has escalated the rush to implement applications within a multi-level secure environment.  At the core of these systems is a new realization of secure and safe RTOSs that meet the stringent requirements and policies being set by the U.S. Government for acquisition of IA products in DoD, Homeland Security and other departments.  And, these systems will likely find adoption where security is crucial such as the financial sector for example.

Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) identifies the implementation framework to allow time and space separation or partitioning of execution to allow applications with different levels of security to co-exist safely within the same system. 

The VxWorks MILS family of products is intended to meet this demand while maintaining consistent, deterministic system performance, whether the need is for a few partitions or dozens of partitions to create and implement a system.

But even with the advent of MILS,  one thing that hasn’t changed is the need for efficient, dependable, and predictable software development - the kinds of benefits commonly associated with the  Java development paradigm.

Aonix, a decades-long industry leader in real-time and safety critical tools, and pioneer in Java platform technologies, has brought together these two strengths to meet the needs of today’s mission critical developers. As a participant in the Java

Aonix Real-Time VM Solutions

The Aonix approach starts with cleanroom implementations based on standard Java platforms. Aonix has developed technologies for three complementary market segments: complex, dynamic soft real-time; deeply embedded and high-performance hard real-time; and certifiable safety critical applications.

PERC Ultra, the foundational member of the PERC product family, supports applications that need to use the rich features of Standard Edition Java libraries, coupled with predictable performance. PERC is a mature and proven product, not an experimental program and has been fielded  in more applications than any other embedded and real-time virtual machine.

PERC Ultra for MILS has been specially configured and tested to work with the latest VxWorks MILS release to enable development of secure applications required to comply with the MILS standard.

PERC Ultra Toolchain

PERC Ultra Toolset Highlights

PERC Accelerator - AOT and JIT deliver superior performance by turbo-charging applications up to 20x over interpreted implementations. PERC is the only embedded VM to support symbolic debugging of native compiled code. PERC is also unique in its support for dynamic loading of native-compiled Java components.

ROMizer - Improves execution speed by statically linking VM, libraries, and application object code into a single executable image, suitable for burning to ROM.

Enterprise-Class Profiling - Speeds time to market and optimizes system performance by helping to quickly detect and fix memory leaks and bottlenecks.

Remote Debugging - Saves time, money, and programmer wear and tear. Lets programmers seamlessly debug on the target device.

PERC Shell - Cuts development time by providing direct access to the running VM vi serial or telnet connection. The result: engineers can optimize system performance and functionality by remotely viewing information and directly controlling the VM running classes.

TFTP Classloader - Cuts development time and movement between development and target platforms by automatically uploading code from a development machine to a target platform via a TFTP server. The same TFTP server can be used for RTOS downloads, PERC downloads, and class loading.

Simulations Support - Lessens the need for expensive development boards and lets engineers start development prior to hardware availability. Allows developers to create products in familiar simulation environments such as VxSim.

PERC Ultra SMP Wins Best-in-Show at ESC Boston

Aonix awarded 1 of 5 top honors for new product announcements at show.

Aonix received “Best in Show” for its new PERC Ultra SMP product at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. eg3.com, a publisher dedicated to news of interest to the embedded marketplace, awarded Aonix for its announcement of PERC Ultra SMP, a multiprocessor and multi-core solution in complex mission-critical embedded and real-time Java applications.

“We view the Aonix announcement as fulfilling a significant gap in software for the embedded space,” said Jason McDonald, senior editor at eg3.com. “Availability of multi-core technology from the Semiconductor sector has far outstripped availability of software that can fully utilize the speed offered by this new breed of processors. With its release of PERC Ultra SMP, Aonix is taking significant steps towards correcting this crisis. Java as a language is important to the future of quality software development and PERC’s real-time garbage collection and support for multi-core systems should be viewed as key elements of any embedded system strategy. Congratulations to Aonix for bringing this important new product to market!”

Analysts agree the timing for such tools is ripe: 

“The military and defense sectors are looking to multi-core processors, components, and systems as a way to reduce system size and cost while increasing performance of the complex systems they develop,” said Dr. Jerry Krasner, VP and Chief Analyst of Embedded Market Forecasters. “The rapid growth in multi-core technology is outpacing the availability of appropriate development tools.”

 “Multicore support in development tools has become important,” noted Al Hilwa, Program Director – Application Development Software at IDC. “Many embedded applications are moving to the more powerful multi-core processors. Tool vendors who want to keep abreast of industry trends need to support the full capabilities of the hardware platforms.”

Aonix has seen significant interest in a multi-core solution from customers in the military, aerospace, and telecommunications sectors. A number of licenses have already been sold into weapons control, ground radar and mission planning projects. Avionics and flight simulation vendors have also expressed interest in multi-core capability for new systems and products now on their drawing boards. Demand for multi-core systems in this space has accelerated the need for multi-core tools and services in recent months.

 “There is no doubt that multi-core technologies and their use in the embedded space are on the upswing,” commented Eric Heikkila, Director Embedded Hardware & Systems, at VDC Research Group. “In a recent published VDC Research study, multi-core CPU revenues from the embedded market in 2011 were projected to reach over six times 2007 multi-core revenues and over 44 times 2006 levels. We continue to see increases in multi-core implementations and tools availability, and strong evidence of that trend continuing to hold true.”

 “Multi-core microprocessors and multiprocessor systems have been around for a number of years now,” said Gary Cato, Aonix director of marketing. “Until recently, tools that enable applications to exploit multi-core performance gains have been unavailable, especially in the embedded market. We are delighted the ‘Best-in-Show’ award acknowledges the value we’re delivering to our customers. ”