GNAT Pro Safety-Critical Development Environment Released for LynxOS-178

New platform extends AdaCore product offerings in embedded safety-critical marketplace

SAN JOSE, Calif., NEW YORK and PARIS – April 1, 2014 – EELive! Conference – AdaCore today announced a new target platform for the latest version of its GNAT Pro Safety-Critical Ada Development Environment. Hosted on Windows workstations, GNAT Pro Safety-Critical V7.2 is now targeted to the LynuxWorks LynxOS-178 V2.2.2 RTOS for PowerPC, and supports both ARINC-653 APEX partitions and POSIX pthreads. GNAT Pro Safety-Critical includes the standard GNAT Pro components – the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench IDEs and accompanying toolset – along with specialized tools and run-time libraries oriented towards applications that have to meet demanding software safety standards, such as DO-178B or DO-178C for avionics. With GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for LynxOS-178, developers who need to deliver high-assurance applications on this LynuxWorks RTOS now have an integrated and full-functioned toolsuite that implements all versions of the Ada language, including Ada 2012, and is backed by AdaCore’s expert support.

GNAT Pro Safety-Critical includes two static analysis tools that are especially valuable in a certification context. GNATstack predicts the maximum stack usage for each task in an application, directly supporting DO-178B objective A-5(6), “Source code is accurate and consistent”. GNATcheck enforces a customer-tailorable set of rules comprising a project-specific coding standard, directly supporting DO-178B objective A-5(4), “Source code conforms to standards”. GNAT Pro Safety-Critical also includes a number of tools for testing and dynamic analysis: the gdb debugger, the AUnit test framework, and the GNATtest unit test harness generator.

GNAT Pro Safety Critical provides several run-time profiles – libraries reflecting restricted feature sets – that are tuned to the requirements of safety certification. The ZFP (Zero Footprint) profile does not require any Ada run-time routines, thus reducing the memory footprint to user code only. The Cert profile supplements the ZFP with support for exceptions and a secondary stack, along with limited dynamic allocation and several other features. The Ravenscar Cert profile includes the Cert features along with the subset of tasking features defined by the standard Ravenscar profile, providing a deterministic concurrency model consistent with the requirements for certification. A full Ada run-time is also provided.

“With its partitioning and its support for both POSIX and ARINC-653 APEX, LynxOS-178 is a versatile RTOS for developers of safety-certified systems,” said Ed Falis, AdaCore’s Product Manager for GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for LynxOS-178. “Ada is an excellent language choice for this sort of software, and we are happy to make it available to LynuxWorks users through our latest version of GNAT Pro Safety-Critical.”

“With this latest version of GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for LynxOS-178, Ada developers now have support for both legacy Ada applications using Ada 95 / Ada 2005, as well as new Ada applications using Ada 2012,” said John Blevins, LynuxWorks Director Product Marketing. “With strong type checking and powerful static analysis tools, Ada provides the ability to run more sophisticated avionics applications on top of our proven safety-critical RTOS. LynxOS-178 is the only RTOS with FAA acceptance as a Reusable Software Component (RSC) and provides an excellent foundation for building certified avionics systems in Ada.”

About AdaCore

Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore's flagship product is the open source GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see www.adacore.com/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including space-based systems, commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains, such as financial services. The SPARK Pro toolset, available from AdaCore, is especially useful in such contexts.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

About LynxOS-178 RTOS
LynxOS-178 is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) that fully satisfies the objectives of the DO178B/C Level A specification and meets requirements for Integrated Modular Avionics developers. LynxOS-178 delivers the security and real-time responsiveness needed for safety-critical systems and provides a low-risk path to DO-178B certification for developers to meet the technical requirements in the production of software for airborne systems. In addition, LynxOS-178 provides full POSIX conformance, enabling developers to take advantage of the time-to-market and investment-protection benefits of open standards-based development. The powerful formula of DO-178B certification, POSIX conformance and ARINC-653 partitioning allows developers to meet the most stringent requirements for real-time, safety-critical applications, while at the same time ensuring application portability, software reuse and interoperability between embedded systems.

About LynuxWorks
LynuxWorks, a world leader in the embedded software market, is committed to providing open and reliable RTOS and software tools to embedded developers. The company's LynxOS family of OSes offers open standards with the highest level of safety and security features, enabling many mission-critical systems in defense, avionics and other industries. The latest product in the portfolio, the award winning LynxSecure offers a secure separation kernel and embedded hypervisor that forms a platform for the development of high assurance systems. Since it was established in 1988, LynuxWorks has created technology that has been successfully deployed in thousands of designs and millions of products made by leading communications, avionics, aerospace/defense, and consumer electronics companies.

LynuxWorks' headquarters are located in San Jose, CA. For more information, visit www.lynuxworks.com.

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