Accelerating Time-to-Market
level of criticality ( the role ) that the component has . For example , within DO-178C there are five levels :
• Level A : Catastrophic : prevents continued safe flight or landing , many fatal injuries
• Level B : Hazardous / Severe : potentially fatal injuries to a small number of occupants
• Level C : Major : impairs crew efficiency , discomfort , or possible injuries to occupants
• Level D : Minor : reduced aircraft safety margins , but well within crew capabilities
• Level E : No Effect : does not affect the safety of the aircraft at all
Given that the cost of software certification alone can be exceedingly expensive , depending upon the certification level required , there is a strong motivation to find and use as many precertifiable components as you can in order to significantly reduce the program risk and cost and time to delivery .
While you must develop your application code , you can ( and should ) avoid developing as much of the code that it sits upon . This includes the components you will need for on- and offboard communications , along with the operating system . It is important to highlight that your choices early on can have a significant impact on your overall certification costs . For example , choosing the right programming language with an ecosystem of certified tools ( such as Ada ), may be worth the investment . We suggest working with certification experts as early in the software development process as possible .
In this article , we propose a verified stack to accelerate safety / security accreditation for consideration . It involves the combination of seL4 and the Object Management Group Data Distribution Service ( DDS ). seL4 is a mathematically formally verified microkernel 2 that has been long-funded and supported by DARPA ; and DDS is an open standards-based communications middleware .
The use of seL4 and DDS can significantly reduce the time a customer needs to invest to develop and commercialize their system . That is , they will only need to implement their own application functionality and certify their own code - not the rest of the stack . This will accelerate time to market significantly .
Leveraging both IRAD and DARPA funding , we have created a high assurance software stack that will significantly reduce time to market by :
1 ) Providing a formally verified software stack that is ready for safety certification as a starting point
2 ) minimizing the application code size , reducing what users need to develop , certify , and maintain
July 2022