We always look forward to the High Integrity Software Conference, but this year’s HISC—set in the beautiful ICC Wales on the 13th of November—felt particularly energising. Maybe it was the packed agenda, maybe the density of expertise in every hallway conversation, or maybe it was the fact that SYSGO and our partners had so much to share. Either way, it was one of those days that reminds you why this industry is exciting.

Showcasing Collaboration: SYSGO & PACE

At our shared SYSGO–PACE booth, we highlighted what has made our partnership so effective: A commitment to making high-integrity graphical systems both more capable and more certifiable.

On the SYSGO side, we brought PikeOS—our real-time operating system and hypervisor that has become a trusted foundation for safety- and security-critical embedded applications. PACE complemented it perfectly with their VAPS product family:

• VAPS XT for advanced HMI development
• VSR, their high-performance software rendering engine
• Support for ARINC 661 Parts 1 & 2, FACE, MOSA, and more

Together, we demonstrated a portable, certifiable graphics reference architecture that scales impressively—from simple CPU-based rendering all the way to complex GPU-driven graphics. Watching visitors realise how seamless this scaling can be was one of the highlights of the day.

A Highlight: Mixed-Criticality with Curtiss-Wright

Another standout moment was reconnecting with our long-time partner Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. We’ve been working together on a mixed-criticality “GP-GPU and Safety” demonstrator, and HISC was the perfect place to unveil it.

The idea is deceptively simple but incredibly powerful: High-functionality, general-purpose GPU compute (GP-GPU) running alongside deterministic, highly-certifiable safety applications—on the same hardware.

And crucially, both sides can communicate safely and in a controlled manner.

Our setup showed:

• A Linux guest running atop PikeOS in a hardware-virtualized partition
• GPU access being pushed through a simple benchmark
• A separate safety-certifiable PikeOS partition absorbing data from the “unsafe” GPU side

It’s the sort of capability that opens doors across aerospace, defence, industrial automation, transportation—you name it. And judging by the crowd gathered around the demo for most of the day, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

PACE’s Perspective: Avionics Displays built for Certification

Of course, PACE brought their own momentum to the event. Paul Ceccherini from PACE joined SYSGO, and visitors were eager to dive into the avionics-focused capabilities of VAPS XT and VSR. Together, our teams were able to show how tightly integrated HMIs and certified RTOS environments can accelerate development while protecting EU sovereignty for mission-critical systems.

There’s something satisfying about seeing different strands of technology—graphics, rendering, real-time scheduling, safety partitioning—all come together into a coherent story. That’s exactly what our joint capabilities offer.

Why HISC truly matters

Walking out of the ICC at the end of the day, what stuck with us wasn’t just the demos. It was the conversations:

• How do we manage complexity without sacrificing certifiability?
• How do we prepare for increasingly GPU-centric workloads in environments where determinism is non-negotiable?
• How do partnerships accelerate innovation while keeping safety at the centre?

These are the questions that will define the next decade of high-integrity systems, and HISC remains one of the few places where all the right people gather to address them head-on.

Looking ahead

If this year’s event was anything to go by, HISC 2025 will be even more inspiring. We’re already excited to return—to show what’s new, to challenge assumptions, and to keep building solutions that push the boundaries of Safety, Security, and certification.

Until then, a huge thank you to everyone who visited our stand, asked great questions, or simply stopped by for a chat. Days like these are why we do what we do.

See you next year!