Green Hills Software announces MCOR MultiCore OpenGL Renderer for DO-178C safety-critical applications

Green Hills Software today announced the availability of the MCOR MultiCore OpenGL Renderer for safety-critical applications, up to and including the highest design assurance level (DO-178C/ED-12C DAL A). MCOR is an OpenGL SC 2.0 graphics driver that delivers scalable, high-performance graphics rendering across multiple CPU cores without using any GPU resources. By using the unique multiprocessing capabilities of the INTEGRITY-178 tuMP real-time operating system (RTOS), MCOR seamlessly scales graphics performance across a user-defined number of CPU cores. MCOR serves a broad range of 2D and 3D graphics applications, from simple human-machine interfaces (HMIs) to primary flight displays (PFDs) and moving map displays.

"MCOR is a game changer for certifiable graphics applications because it provides freedom from dependencies on overly complex GPUs and GPU drivers," said Dan O'Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software. "MCOR builds on the unrivaled multicore airworthiness pedigree of the INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS to deliver a high-performance, DAL A certifiable graphics solution across multiple processor architectures."

Unlike other graphics drivers, MCOR provides an open-standard interface with user-defined shader programmes that scale across multiple CPU cores to deliver deterministic high performance. With that scalable performance, it can drive a 1920x1080 display at 60Hz while leaving processing power for other applications. The key differentiators of MCOR from GPU drivers are that it is designed for DAL A certification, it avoids the interference created by traditional GPU implementations, and it includes features not available for GPUs, such as allowing multiple applications to write windows on the same display.

MCOR runs on top of the safety-critical INTEGRITY-178 tuMP RTOS, which has an unparalleled pedigree of DO-178C DAL A certifications. INTEGRITY-178 was the first commercial partition-enforcing RTOS approved as complying with DO-178B Level A objectives (2002), and the first RTOS included in a multicore certification to DO-178C and AC 20-193/CAST-32A objectives. INTEGRITY-178 tuMP includes Bandwidth Allocation and Monitoring (BAM) technology as a general solution for mitigating multicore interference. BAM ensures that critical applications get their allocated access to shared resources in order to meet their required deadlines, significantly lowering integration and certification risk. Because MCOR runs on the CPU cores, any multicore interference between it and other applications is also mitigated by BAM technology. Green Hills Software has delivered over 90 unique customer safety and security certification evidence packages and is currently in the verification phase for providing DO-178C and AC 20-193 (formerly CAST-32A) airworthiness evidence for INTEGRITY-178 tuMP running on quad-core 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processors (formerly Tiger Lake).