Press Releases

The FidelityVCF effort combines SYSGO’s PikeOS real-time operating system with Quantum3D’s iData® Human Machine Interface (HMI) embedded visual computing software toolkits to provide the industry’s most advanced and comprehensive solution for a broad spectrum of safety-critical commercial, military, industrial and FAA DO-178B Level-A- and ARINC 653-based avionics, vehicle electronics, medical and other advanced real-time embedded visual computing initiatives.

Today’s embedded development projects often have short schedules and reduced budgets, which means system integrators have very little time to integrate multiple system software components from multiple vendors and then tune them to meet program-specific performance and functional objectives, especially if FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) certification is required. By working closely to integrate their respective products into the FidelityVCF, SYSGO and Quantum3D can provide system integrators with a tightly coupled COTS solution that meets real-time visual computing requirements that demand state-of-the-art RTOS operating environments and regulatory certification. The companies are also collaborating to ensure that their respective products provide a tightly coupled solution for Linux applications by integrating iData with ELinOS, SYSGO’s award-winning Industrial Grade Linux. Because Quantum3D is also a leading Embedded Visual Computing (EVC) system and subsystem hardware supplier, the companies can provide a turnkey application deployment solution that is ideal for hosting PikeOS- or ELinOS-based visual computing applications that employ iData HMIs.

The FidelityVCF initiative between Quantum3D and SYSGO offers several crucial capabilities to embedded systems designers that are uniquely valuable in deployed real-time visual and interactive systems. First, FidelityVCF provides engineers with a solution that satisfies safety-critical needs for applications where failure may have catastrophic consequences. Both iData and PikeOS are certifiable for safety-critical use according to ARINC 653 specification: Avionics application standard software interface, and RTCA DO-178B Level-A specification: Software considerations in airborne systems and equipment certification. Second, the combination of iData and PikeOS provides a complete solution for applications that require secure partitioning of data display or user interfaces across differing criticality or security levels. For example, using iData and PikeOS, Level-A criticality data can be simultaneously displayed with Level-D data, each running in a secure partition and insulated from the effects of the other. Similarly, user interfaces at different security levels may be displayed simultaneously with absolute assurance that no application data can cross partition boundaries.

“There are several choices in RTOS products for safety-critical and MLS visual computing applications, but none have the technical advantages of PikeOS from our perspective,” said Ross Q. Smith, Quantum3D co-founder and president. “By working with SYSGO to tightly integrate our iData visual computing framework with PikeOS, we’re able to provide our customers with a DO-178B Level-A certifiable and ARINC 653 certifiable processing and display solution that delivers the best performance and features in the market, with the least risk and shortest time-to-market. Everyone wins!”

”Certification schedule and costs for embedded visual computing applications can be significantly reduced by using Quantum3D’s Dynamic Bytecode™ technology, which is part of iData and which eliminates the need to recreate and recertify HMI application source code from scratch each time. PikeOS is targeting exactly the same issue – but at the operating system level as opposed to the HMI level,” said Detlev Schaadt, SYSGO CTO. “So tight integration of these two products is a natural fit. FidelityVCF provides a highly integrated development for deploying secure and safety-critical visual computing applications. FidelityVCF represents the next-generation HMI framework and it opens up new horizons for HMI architects.”

About PikeOS from SYSGO

PikeOS is a powerful and efficient COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) paravirtualization real-time operating system based on a state-of-the-art separation microkernel that is optimized for safety-critical and multi-level-secure applications. PikeOS supports multiple additional operating systems and Runtime Environments (RTEs), such as Linux, ARINC 653 and POSIX, together with their associated applications. Under PikeOS, operating systems and RTEs run concurrently and cooperatively in their own partitions. Applications running under PikeOS have total separation and protection from other processes running within the same system. The PikeOS partitioning system, in conjunction with its internal protection mechanisms, provides the highest level of safety and security available in the industry today.

More information at www.sysgo.com/pikeos

About iData from Quantum3D

iData is an advanced, cross-platform, COTS real-time visual computing framework that uniquely enables developers to rapidly create and deploy model-based user interfaces and visual computing applications for embedded systems. Designed for both non-certified and DO-178B Level-A certified commercial and military embedded visual computing applications, iData is optimized for operation in both OpenGL® and OpenGL ES® embedded operating environments on a wide range of microprocessor, graphics processor and operating system platforms. With its Dynamic Bytecode generation technology, iData developers are able to rapidly and easily create optimized, executable models of sophisticated graphics, text and visual images that are directly deployable across the complete spectrum of embedded systems.

FidelityVCF at ESC SV

The FidelityVCF integrated Visual Computing Framework, along with selected SYSGO and Quantum3D embedded development and deployment products and solutions, will be on display at ESC SV in the SYSGO & Quantum3D booth (no. 732) in San Jose, CA., April 2-5, 2007.

About Quantum3D

Quantum3D develops and markets COTS real-time, open-architecture Image Generation (IG) solutions, Embedded Visual Computing (EVC) systems and subsystems, development software and support services for the synthetic environment visual and sensor simulation and training and tactical and industrial visual computing markets. Quantum3D is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California, with development centers located in Phoenix, AZ, Huntsville, AL, and Orlando, FL and with sales and logistics in Europe via Quantum3D, Ltd., located in Reading, UK.

For more information about Quantum3D, please visit www.quantum3d.com