Technology Trends and Futures in
Safety, Security, and Mission-Critical Systems

View presentations from the seminar series conducted by Aonix, Wind River, Verocel, and OIS covering the latest technologies for critical software systems.

Aonix, in partnership with industry leading suppliers to the Aerospace and Defense industries, conducted a day-long seminar in a series of cities. These seminars probed some of the most important new technology issues of our time.  

Embedded hardware is faster than ever with larger memory and capable to execute more graphics, better handle multi-device interconnectivity and generally, allow larger application execution in less physical space.  Multi-partitioned RTOS solutions now allow mixing soft real-time and hard real-time applications, or enabling safety-critical applications to reside side-by-side with non-safety-oriented components in the same hardware platform.  Legacy code and newer language opportunities add new complexities of intermixing and executing mixed language applications.  New or enhanced standards are emerging with the potential to invalidate previously implemented systems.

You are invited to review presentation materials from these informative seminars, where Aonix, Wind River, Objective Interface Systems and Verocel shared information with enthused audiences in an informative day of technology-focused presentations and product demonstrations that address these and many of the industry-specific requirements you’ll need to understand to be truly successful.  If you are involved in the development or management of real-time or embedded systems in the Aerospace, Safety-Critical Systems, Security, or Government space, this material will be priceless.

Agenda At-a-Glance

Topics

“Applicability of Java for Safety-Critical Systems”

As a high-level programming language, Java encourages better programming discipline and rigor than C and C++.  Combined with the broad interdisciplinary appeal of the Java programming language, these benefits make Java an attractive option for development of safety-critical applications.  In this talk, Dr. Nilsen describes programming conventions, Java development tools, and run-time implementation techniques that enable certification of Java software components to the highest levels of DO-178B guidelines.  The technologies are based on standardization work carried out within the JSR-302 expert group.

“Mission-Critical Uses of Java”

As modern software systems grow in size and complexity, the portability, abstraction, and compositional strengths of the Java programming language make it an attractive alternative to C and C++.  Typical embedded system developers find that the switch to Java makes them twice as productive during development of new functionality and five to ten times as productive during routine software maintenance activities.  They also find that systems built on a Java foundation are less brittle, and can more easily evolve to support changing business and mission requirements.  This talk surveys the use of Java in a variety of mission-critical systems.  Several case studies are presented, demonstrating successful commercial deployment of applications with soft real-time timing constraints ranging from a single ms to tens of ms, with availability requirements of 99.999% and higher.

“Using Multi-Partitioned Solutions in Certifiable Applications”

This informative session describes the technical aspects of Wind River’s multi-partition solutions for safety-critical systems and describes industry changes and issues involving this solution.

“Aonix PERC in MILS Environments”

Jack will provide an overview of the integration of Aonix PERC Ultra with the Wind River’s MILS product and describe the technical benefits of this virtual machine technology. The presentation will include a live demonstration of the Workbench plug-in for PERC Ultra. 

“Use of MILS Solutions in Secure Applications”

Chris will describe the technical aspects of Wind River’s MILS solution and describe technical benefits and issues involving this technology.  This presentation includes a live product demonstration. 

“Using Multi-Partitioned Solutions in Certifiable Applications”

This informative session describes the technical aspects of Wind River’s multi-partition solutions for safety-critical systems and describes industry changes and issues involving this solution.

“Ada Technology for Multi-Partitioned Safety-Critical Applications”

Rhoda will describe the technical aspects and integration of the Aonix ObjectAda Raven technology with Wind River’s VxWorks 653 products. The presentation will present how ObjectAda works with Wind River’s Workbench technology to enable multi-language debugging in a multi-partition environment.

“DO-178C – Safety-Critical Industry Update”

For years, developers have been following the stringent development and deployment guidelines for safety-critical systems.  George will explore how those guidelines are changing in the upcoming DO-178C standard, and optional annexes help support model based development, object oriented technology, and formal methods.

“Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) – a Primer”

The Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) architecture is a layered approach to building high assurance components for multi-domain solutions.  It supports both multi-level and multiple single levels of security (MLS and MSLS) as well as safety requirements. MILS enables policy enforcement functions to be layered among a separation kernel, middleware, and applications. Policy enforcement is non-bypassable, evaluatable, always invoked, and tamper-proof, an important characteristic in making certification practical, affordable, and achievable. The Partitioning Communications System (PCS) extends these benefits to distributed systems.

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Presenter Bios

Dr. Kelvin Nilsen is Chief Technology Officer at Aonix and is a key expert group participant in JSR-302, the Java Community Process effort to develop a standardized approach to safety critical Java. Prior to joining Aonix, Kelvin’s seminal research on the topic of real-time Java led to the founding of NewMonics which was acquired by Aonix In 2003. Previously, Kelvin pioneered research in real-time programming at the Computer Science faculty at Iowa State University that resulted in five commercial patents including key VM technologies such as real-time garbage collection.  Kelvin earned his degree in physics from Brigham Young University and his MSCS and PhD from the University of Arizona.

Chip Downing joined Wind River as the Senior Industry Marketing Manager for Aerospace and Defense in 2005.  Prior to joining Wind River, Chip was VP of  Sales for Esterel Technologies, a company delivering SCADE, a design and development environment for safety-critical control systems.   Prior to Esterel, Mr. Downing lead sales, marketing and consulting organizations at Validated Software, OnCore Systems, Mentor Graphics, Qualix Group and Ready Systems.

Rhoda Quate has specialized in software development tool support for the past 17 years.   She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from University of Colorado at Boulder and completed her master’s degree in Software Engineering at National University in San Diego.  Rhoda joined TeleSoft in the early 90’s to provide Ada training and consultation to TeleSoft clients.  She soon expanded into training and consulting for Motif/X Windows based software development.  She currently works as an Application Field Engineer at Aonix North America, supporting their software development tools in the areas of Ada, Java, X/Motif based GUI tools, and software modeling.

George Romanski has been involved in the software industry for over 36 years.  He has developed software tools, techniques and guidance which are used to certify numerous avionics and aerospace programs.  Mr. Romanski serves the safety-critical industry as a member several committees including ARINC-653 (IMA specification) and SC-205 (Development of DO-178C).  Mr. Romanski is president of Verocel, a company specializing in the verification of software, and in the development of tools and guidance that helps in this process. 

Gordon Uchenick is an author, frequent presenter, and lecturer on Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS). Mr. Uchenick participates in standards bodies such as The Object Management Group and The Open Group. Gordon’s work has focused on the high assurance MILS architecture for more than five years. Prior to joining Objective Interface, he was an engineering specialist for seven years with Wind River Systems, concentrating on requirements, design, and certification of the company’s security and safety critical VxWorks technologies. Before Wind River, Mr. Uchenick was a software engineer for 27 years, developing mission critical distributed systems for industry and government.

Chris Constantinides is a Senior Aerospace and Defense Systems Specialist focusing on Security for Wind River Systems. He has been in or serviced the Military and Aerospace Industry for over 20 years. Chris is a contributor in the MILS community standards and a member of the Real Time Embedded Systems Forum in The Open Group. Prior to joining Wind River, Chris has worked for McDonnell Douglas Corporation and Boeing Corporation on numerous programs that span from fighter aircraft to commercial jets to missiles. Chris has also been a part of advanced research and development for both of these companies doing system and sub-system hardware and software design.

Jack Carden joined Aonix as Senior Application Engineer in 2004 to focus on the PERC product line.  Prior to joining Aonix, Jack has many years of experience in developing real-time, embedded software systems, primarily in the telecommunications field.  Jack earned his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the University of Louisville and his MBA at the University of Dallas.

John Alexander is the Senior Product Manager for Aerospace & Defense Platforms at Wind River, and works primarily in the areas of safety and security certification, as well as ARINC 653 and MILS related technologies.  Prior to joining Wind River John as Sr. Product Manager for Insignia Solutions in the embedded Java virtual machine market.  Prior to Insignia Mr. Alexander held product management positions at Omnis Software (cross platform development tools), Red Hat (development tools for Linux), Cygnus Solutions (open source development tools), and Philips Semiconductor (multimedia).  John earned his B.S. in Computer Engineering from U.C. Santa Cruz, and his MBA from U.C. Davis.