Aonix®, a provider of solutions for safety- and mission-critical applications, announced the release of ObjectAda RAVEN for Windows targeting the Wind River VxWorks 653 multi-partition RTOS for PowerPC. ObjectAda RAVEN features an enhanced safety-critical Ada runtime that communicates to the underlying RTOS through the ARINC-653 APEX interface available in the Wind River VxWorks 653 environment — enabling high execution and safety certification efficiency.

ObjectAda RAVEN is an embedded Ada development system that enables engineers to isolate and build applications for deployment in one or more VxWorks 653 execution partitions. This ability to segment code into separate execution partitions has significant impact to the cost of safety-critical certification since developers can separate the code subject to the highest levels of criticality from less-critical code and thereby separately test and scrutinize it for the appropriate level of certification. In addition, Wind River VxWorks 653 includes DO-178B Level A qualified development tools that further reduce the testing burden of updated code and modified configurations. With standard industry costs to create certification evidence starting at $45 and often creeping into the hundreds of dollars per application source line, any reduction or separation of lower-criticality code yields dramatic savings.

ObjectAda RAVEN for Windows targeting VxWorks 653/PowerPC consists of a fully compliant ACATS 2.5 Ada 95 compiler with supporting tools including a build/bind tool, library tool and debugger, and delivered with a predefined program library which conforms to the Ravenscar profile subset of the full predefined language. The Ravenscar profile, adopted at the Eight International Real-Time Ada Workshop (IRTAW-8), Ravenscar UK, and subsequently made part of the Ada '05 specification, accommodates certification requirements for high-integrity (safety-critical) real-time systems. The ObjectAda RAVEN runtime environment is certifiable to DO-178B Level-A while supporting task execution through the underlying VxWorks 653 RTOS and board support services.

"The Aonix ObjectAda RAVEN product's integration with Wind River VxWorks 653 gives the aerospace and defense industry a very powerful platform," noted Chip Downing, Senior A&D Industry Marketing Manager at Wind River. "The Aonix Ada runtime combined with the Wind River VxWorks 653 platform make the ObjectAda RAVEN solution highly portable and very appealing to safety-critical developers needing to deploy the latest industry standards."

"Support for Wind River's world-class time and space partitioned RTOS is taking Aonix to a new level in the safety-critical space," said Gary Cato, director of strategic alliances at Aonix. "Certifying applications is expensive in both human capital investment and time to market. By providing developers with products that improve code reliability, reduce testing overhead and shorten certification cycles we help customers realize significant savings."

Aonix ObjectAda products give developers the choice between the traditional Aonix IDE for development and the new AonixADT™ Eclipse plug-in. Developers also gain full access to the Wind River Workbench environment including Ada debug and the ability to debug across multiple languages.