Abaco Announces Availability of LynxOS-178 2.2.4 to Speed Development and Reduce Cost of Safety Certifiable Systems

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing to build its safety certifiable portfolio and capability, Abaco Systems today announced availability of the LynxOS®-178 2.2.4 real time operating system from Lynx Software Technologies (formerly LynuxWorks™) for Abaco's DO-254 certifiable SBC 314 3U VPX single board computer (SBC). Because both the SBC314 and LynxOS-178 are true COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) products, customers can take advantage of the hardware/software combination to significantly accelerate a program start and ease their roadmap to certification - reducing risk, time and cost.

LynxOS-178 is also aligned to the FACE™ (Future Airborne Capability Environment) standard which defines an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types, and which is of importance to many of Abaco's customers.

Abaco also announced the first customer for the combined hardware/software offering: Ampyx Power, a Dutch company developing a disruptive next generation wind energy technology within the emerging Airborne Wind Energy sector. Ampyx Power selected the Abaco/Lynx certifiable COTS solution for their tethered autonomous aircraft that can supply 2000 households with cheap and sustainable energy in the future.

"At Ampyx Power we strive for safety and reliability to support our business case," said Erik van der Heide, Supply Chain Manager at Ampyx Power. "Developing a new technology that is also compliant to the aviation certification regulations is a time-consuming and costly process. This combination of hardware and software in the single board computer, for our autopilot with proprietary algorithms, contributes to a robust and reliable Airborne Wind Energy system."

With programs looking to leverage the time and cost benefits of COTS hardware and software products for safety certification, while COTS vendors seek program-specific funding to enable them to provide those benefits, Abaco has broken the deadlock by making a forward-looking upfront investment in developing the artifacts necessary to achieve DAL A DO-254 certification, considerably reducing the customer burden. Supported products include the SBC314, FORCE2 and RAR15-XMC dual avionics protocol interface.

As well as supporting FACE, LynxOS-178 2.2.4 supports Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) and ARINC 653 APplication EXecutive (APEX), and offers true portability for safety-critical software designs. LynxOS-178 2.2.4 is also offered with a full set of DO-178C DAL-A certification artifacts for systems requiring the highest level of avionics safety certification.

LynxOS-178 is also the first and only time- and space-partitioned RTOS to have obtained a Reusable Software Component (RSC) award from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). LynxOS-178 2.2.4 will obtain the third RSC award for the product line, building upon the success of two previous RSC awards.

"Achieving safety certification represents a major challenge for our customers – but the availability of LynxOS-178 2.2.4 for our SBC314, together with the investment we have made in DAL A artifacts,  will considerably ease their path," said Mrinal Iyengar, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. "These COTS solutions will enable them to bring their solutions to market faster and at lower cost than would otherwise be possible."

"Bringing our DO-178C safety-certified RTOS together with the DO-254 certifiable COTS hardware platform from Abaco is really changing the game for avionics systems developers," said Robert Day, Vice President, Marketing at Lynx. "This combination brings together the best of both worlds, and enables customers like Ampyx Power to bring new products to market quickly with significantly reduced risk and cost."

The SBC314 3U VPX rugged single board computer is available with either the Qualcomm (formerly NXP/Freescale) QorIQ™ T2081 processor for maximum performance or with the QorIQ T1042 for applications where minimal power consumption is required.

The FORCE2 mission ready rugged display computer integrates the SBC314 with an AMD Radeon™ E8860 or coreAVI E8860 graphics processor and up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM.

About Abaco Systems

With more than 30 years' experience, Abaco Systems is a global leader in open architecture computing and electronic systems for aerospace, defense and industrial applications. We deliver and support open modular solutions developed to upgrade and enhance the growing data, analytics, communications and sensor processing capabilities of our target applications. This, together with our 800+ professionals' unwavering focus on our customers' success, reduces program cost and risk, allows technology insertion with affordable readiness and enables platforms to successfully reach deployment sooner and with a lower total cost of ownership. With an active presence in hundreds of national asset platforms on land, sea and in the air, Abaco Systems is trusted where it matters most. www.abaco.com

LynxOS is a registered trademark and LynuxWorks is a trade mark of Lynx Software Technologies. FACE is a trademark of The Open Group. Radeon is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. QorIQ is a trademark of Qualcomm. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Abaco Systems

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