AdaCore Celebrates C-130 AMP’s Maiden Flight

New York and Paris, December 12, 2006 – AdaCore joins The Boeing Company, Smiths Aerospace and Wind River Systems in celebrating the successful first flight of the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) aircraft, which took place on September 19. AdaCore serves as a key member of Smiths Aerospace’s development team for the C-130 AMP’s Mission Processor (MP). The MP provides primary computing capability for the cockpit display generation, and extensive video processing, which supports the manipulation and distribution of new and legacy video sources to all aircraft displays. The U.S. Air Force initiated the C-130 AMP to standardize configurations, lower the cost of ownership, and increase survivability of its aging C-130 aircraft. It is the most comprehensive C-130 avionics modification ever conducted.

The MP’s critical infrastructure software is a combination of Wind River’s Platform for Safety Critical ARINC-653 real-time commercial operating system and development tools, AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada 95 compiler and development environment for PSC ARINC-653 (including GPS) and Smiths Aerospace’s infrastructure software. The Software Common Operating Environment (SCOE) delivery provides the C-130 AMP team with an ARINC-653 software partitioned operating system, as well as a full set of “partitioning aware” tools to support software development and debug for the PowerPC.

As part of the Smiths Aerospace contract, AdaCore ported the compiler, tools and run-time libraries to work with PSC ARINC-653. AdaCore also provided an Ada binding to the ARINC-653 APEX facilities for partitioned operating systems, as provided in PSC ARINC-653. New debugging modes were supported as well. The company developed an Ada run-time library certifiable to avionics safety standard DO-178B Level A, and worked with Verocel to develop certification evidence for it.

“AdaCore was specifically selected by Smiths’ mission processor development team for its superior technical expertise with both Ada compilation systems and with avionics application development environments,” said Dudrey Smith, chief software technologist at Smiths Aerospace. “With fast compilation speed, quality code generation, and an extensive set of switches and pragmas, AdaCore’s GNAT Pro specifically addressed the mission processor’s need for mission-critical robustness and flexibility.”

“The MP project is a perfect illustration of how mission-critical aerospace systems should be architected,” said Robert Dewar, CEO of AdaCore. “Turnkey avionics configurations, like the SCOE, facilitate the integration of future upgrades and minimize the impact of obsolescence.”

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where reliability, efficiency and safety are critical. AdaCore's flagship product is GNAT Pro, which comes with expert online support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has customers worldwide; click here for more information.

Use of Ada and GNAT Pro continues to grow, especially in high-integrity and safety-critical applications, including commercial and defense aircraft avionics, air traffic control, railroad systems, financial services and medical devices. AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

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