Mentor Graphics Announces Nucleus RTOS Safety Critical Certification

Mentor Graphics Corporation announced the new Nucleus SafetyCert real-time operating system (RTOS), targeting high-performance, next-generation applications for embedded devices designed to meet safety and reliability regulatory requirements for industrial, medical, and airborne systems. Running in more than 3 billion devices, the higher-performance and scalable Nucleus RTOS has been verified and documented by Verocel, Inc., a leading independent safety-critical software verification company. The Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS meets the certification requirements for device manufacturers developing safety-related software for products requiring IEC 61508 SIL 3, IEC 62304 Class C, or RTCA DO-178C Level A safety certification.

Growth in safety-critical embedded devices requiring highly reliable software, plus the need to meet increased scrutiny from regulatory agencies, is placing greater demands on software developers. Costs for safety certification are rapidly increasing and device software complexity is expanding for mission-critical devices due to increased connectivity and middleware components, and rich graphic user interfaces. The Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS is a more cost effective safety-certifiable solution that includes a certified version of Nucleus RTOS with a process model that supports space partitioning, run-time libraries, connectivity, networking, data storage and the Sourcery CodeBench Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS has been designed, validated, and documented to be used in the development of safety-related software for high safety integrity levels of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards 61508 and 62304 for industrial and medical devices, and for avionics devices requiring high levels of DO-178C certification. The Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS helps to reduce risk for software developers by providing the certification package required to navigate through the regulatory approval process.

Mixed Criticality
Cost-reduction requirements are driving the need to consolidate functionality, which increasingly entails combining safety-critical applications with non-critical applications. The historical approach of using separate hardware modules to isolate safety-certified applications from non-certified applications is burdened with drawbacks that include increased bill of material (BOM) costs, weight, testing, heat, and power consumption. Today's modern high-performance processors allow software developers to consolidate components onto a single system. The Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS with a certified process model is a lighter-weight solution that leverages modern processors for single chip mixed-criticality architectures.

Utilizing the memory management unit without virtualizing memory, the Nucleus RTOS safety certification provides a lower overhead approach to create space partitions that isolates mission critical certified applications from non-safety applications on a single processor or SOC. With the Nucleus SafetyCert RTOS, costs are reportedly reduced by certifying only the safety-critical software components in devices with mixed-criticality components to meet the IEC 61508 and 62304 requirements for safety assurance.

Keywords: Safety-Related Software, Virtualizing Memory, Embedded Devices, IEC, RTOS, ARC Advisory Group.