Northrop Grumman Picks Green Hills' INTEGRITY-178B tuMP Multicore Operating System

Northrop Grumman (News - Alert) has selected Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY-178B tuMP multicore operating system for use in its Gen II Mission Computer, for the U.S. Marine Corps UH-1Y and AH-1Z helicopter upgrades.

“The UH-1Y and AH-1Z are highly integrated combat helicopters that require mission computers with significant yet flexible computing capabilities, which can be updated to support specific configurations,” said Ike Song, vice president of Northrop Grumman's Situational Awareness Systems business unit in Woodland Hills, Calif.

With the help of Freescale (News - Alert) QorIQ P4080-based single-board computer, the capabilities of INTEGRITY-178B Time-Variant Unified Multi Processing (tuMP) are hosted by the Northrop Grumman Technical Refresh Mission Computer.

The INTEGRITY-178B tuMP multicore operating system features multicore operating system capabilities that include support for AMP and SMP. Company officials said that tuMP defines groupings, which are called affinity groups, of how cores will be used by one or more applications.

And over time, the grouping of cores and applications are permitted to differ.

One set of affinity groups are scheduled separately from the other sets of affinity groups. Company officials said this permits time-lines that meet application requirements, as well as other sets affinity groups that can be developed and make use of time windows where cores are not being used.

Additionally, INTEGRITY-178B tuMP extends partitioning support beyond single-core processors.

Northrop Grumman open systems architectural concept has been developed on the foundation of the tuMP multicore operating system, which provides a multicore framework for integration of applications of different programming languages, portable operating environments and assurance needs.

Thanks to the scheduling capabilities of INTEGRITY-178B tuMP, Northrop Grumman can effectively use the eight cores of the Freescale QorIQ P4080, according to company officials.

Green Hills Software is an independent vendor of embedded development solutions. Dan O'Dowd, founder and CEO at Green Hills Software, said the company has developed the INTEGRITY-178B tuMP multicore operating system for customers such as Northrop Grumman who want to maximize utilization of a multicore processor, using products from a supplier with a proven reputation for delivery of reliable, safe and secure software.

Last December, the company and Real Time Logic announced the full integration of Real Time Logic’s Web application development tools, including Barracuda Application Server, with Green Hills Software's INTEGRITY real-time operating system.