Software-based graphics for safety-critical HMIs

Enables avionics and other safety-critical visual computing application developers to deploy industry-standard real-time OpenGL ES and SC applications.

New from Quantum3D, IGL178 is billed as the industry's first entirely software-based FAA DO-178B Level-A certifiable OpenGL safety critical (SC) and OpenGL embedded systems (ES) graphics processing unit (GPU).

IGL178 enables avionics and other safety-critical visual computing application developers to deploy industry-standard real-time OpenGL ES and SC applications on virtually any embedded system or display device, including systems not equipped with hardware-accelerated GPUs.

IGL178 also enables GPU-equipped systems for which safety-critical certifiable drivers are not available to host certified applications by eliminating un-trusted driver code.

With its ability to support high-fidelity high-performance real-time 2D and 3D graphics and video applications on a wide range of systems and operating environments, IGL178 is well suited for development and deployment of new classes of low-cost, obsolescence-proof avionics, weapon systems and other advanced-display applications, including primary and multi-function displays (PFDs and MFDs), head-up displays (HUDs), standby instruments and soft controllers.

IGL178 also features unique capabilities that make it ideal for new applications, including scaleable Avionics Application Standard Software Interface (ARINC 653)-partitioned safety-critical and multilevel-secure workstation applications.

Implemented by the Quantum3D IData team and optimised for avionics and other safety- and mission-critical embedded visual computing applications, IGL178 is an efficient, small-footprint, comprehensive software implementation of OpenGL ES and SC that features extensive optimisations to provide high-performance, high-fidelity, precision software-based rendering.

A key benefit of IGL178 is that it offers application developers a scalable solution for embedded graphics that supports both CPU-accelerated and GPU-accelerated graphics subsystems with a single industry-standard API so that applications may be readily deployed across multiple platform types with minimal time and development expense.

"IGL178 addresses many of the biggest problems facing the safety-critical embedded graphics industry today-COTS GPU scalability, certifiability and obsolescence", says Ross Q Smith, Quantum3D President and cofounder.

"By enabling the usage of industry-standard OpenGL ES and SC on virtually any platform, IGL178 allows developers in all embedded markets to employ common tool chains and common software to deploy long-lifecycle, high-fidelity, precision 2D and 3D graphics and video-intensive applications on essentially all embedded visual computing platforms, even those without dedicated hardware graphics acceleration, as well as address new challenges like MLS workstation and ARINC 653 partitioned applications".

Whereas desktop or embedded merchant GPUs can provide powerful performance for visual computing applications, they also have significant limitations - especially for avionics, medical device and military applications where safety-critical certification and long-lifecycle support is required.

Modern merchant GPUs are designed for volume PC and cellphone applications where features, performance and cost are the most important design factors.

Merchant GPUs, in general, are not designed to meet the rigorous hardware verification requirements of FAA DO-254 or similar standards.

Because of the complexity required to meet the needs of demanding video games and similar applications, the design of merchant GPUs makes such certification efforts resource and cost prohibitive for the GPU manufacturers and virtually impossible to conduct as a post-design effort.

In addition, this same GPU complexity, combined with the limited volume of safety-critical and mission-critical applications compared with consumer applications, also results in limited availability and often expensive software development efforts to produce drivers that are suitable for FAA DO-178B Level-A or similar software certifications.

Moreover, the short service life of merchant GPUs (typically one to three years, with five years for automotive components) requires expensive and frequent lifetime buys for end-of-life components when such components are employed on long-lifecycle (10- to 20-year) programmes such as avionics systems.

Also, application-specific requirements, such as video alpha blending, alpha-out channels, strict time partitioning, precision anti-aliasing, support for unique display formats and use with FPGAs, DSPs and multicore designs, may be difficult or exceedingly expensive to implement with COTS GPUs.

IGL178, by exploiting the available performance and capability of modern, embedded CPUs, fundamentally addresses merchant GPU limitations while still providing the capabilities and performance required for a wide variety of embedded visual computing applications.

With its unique, flexible architecture, IGL178 provides new capabilities that enable application developers to address multiple-frame-rate, multi-level secure and multiple criticality-level embedded visual computing applications in a single display by supporting rendering into independent software frame buffers, which may then be transferred via IPC and written to a display-frame buffer via image compositing in a device interface partition.

With its optional virtualised driver architecture, IGL178 also supports rendering into multiple virtualised geometry queues which may then be transferred via IPC and rendered using any OpenGL driver to a single display device, allowing multi-critical applications to employ a single GPU hardware accelerated driver.

In either case, the result of the above capabilities is a strict partitioning of rendering applications from each other that allows each partition to render independently at different frame rates.

IGL178 is fully compatible with IData, Quantum3D's industry-leading human machine interface (HMI) and EVC development and deployment tool suite.

By combining IData178 and IGL178, developers can deploy a trusted, safety-certifiable, small-footprint graphics software stack to any computing device.

IData offers unique features such as multirate rendering, smart clear/scissor and static background rendering to enable applications to achieve unprecedented high performance levels from a software-based GPU solution.

The partitioned, multi-critical HMI, advanced rendering capability and high performance are key features of FidelityVCF, the DO-178B Level-A Certifiable Embedded Visual Computing Framework that combines IData178 with IGL178 and Sysgo's PikeOS ARINC 653 partitioned virtualised RTOS.

IGL178 has been selected for two FAA DO-178 certifiable avionics programmes, both of which are currently in development.

Quantum3D sells IGL178 as a binary software development tool, combined with a target reference platform, for a wide variety of processors and operating environments including PowerPC (Freescale, Motorola and IBM), Intel IA32/IA64 and ARM 11 CPUs combined with popular standard and safety-critical operating systems and RTOSs including Linux, Microsoft WindowsXP and CE, Sysgo PikeOS, Wind River VxWorks and VxWorks AE653, Green Hills Integrity and Integrity-178B, LynuxWorks LynxOS and LynxOS-178 systems.

International single-seat pricing for IGL178 development binary licences is priced at US $60,000, and international, single-unit target reference systems start at approximately US $7500.

Both software and reference systems are available with standard lead times.

IGL178 is also sold as a component of FidelityVCF, and IGL178 source code and porting services for customer-specific platforms are also available from Quantum3D.

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