Portable AFDX - SYSGO provides first software-only Implementation for AFDX

Mainz/Germany, May 05, 2006

SYSGO, the European vendor for safety critical COTS software, today announced the release of a genuine software solution for AFDX (ARINC-664), the first pure software implementation of AFDX available on the market. SYSGO´s AFDX software solution will be undergo DO178B Level B certification.

"This is another milestone to strengthen our position as a major vendor of safety critical COTS software in Europe. Since the US avionics market also focuses on AFDX, this is the next step that will allow SYSGO to emerge in the US market with a widely needed product", says Detlev Schaadt, CTO of SYSGO. The software implementation of AFDX offers design possibilities that hardware solutions can not provide. Software AFDX is portable, more flexible and much more affordable compared to the currently used ASICs. Portable AFDX consists of the AFDX Node implementation and the very small foot-printed host driver. ICMP and SNMP run on the AFDX Node not on the host. The configuration of the AFDX Node can be done through the host driver which uses a XML based VCT (Virtual Channel Table). This flexibility enables Portable AFDX to be used in several environments, only by changing the configuration. SYSGO´s software AFDX avoids the high design risks and extensive development costs of a hardware solution and provides the opportunity to incorporate customer ideas and to be ready for future challenges.

The reference implementation is based on a PowerQuicc II PMC module. SYSGO provides drivers for their own PikeOS RTOS, LynxOS-178 (LynuxWorks) and Linux. However, there are no limitations for using other safety critical RTOS.

About AFDX
"Avionic Full-Duplex Switched Ethernet" (AFDX/ARINC-664) is a specification of a deterministic aircraft data network bus system for public (but not only) avionic transportation. The network is based on standard 802.3 Ethernet technology components to reduce the overall costs for the aircraft network. AFDX extends the standard Ethernet by adding Quality of Service (QoS) and deterministic behaviour with a guaranteed dedicated bandwidth.