DO-178 Certified Curtiss-Wright VME-183 BSP

Verocel develops and certifies custom board support packages for COTS or custom hardware.

Verocel developed and certified the board support package for the Curtiss-Wright VME-183 computer to DO-178C, Level B. As shown in the figures below, Verocel added functionality to the BSP by adding support for VME, a custom bootloader, auxiliary clock, built-in-test support and more. This BSP also includes an interface to an optional custom hardware comparator that enhances safety.

The BSP controls hardware initialization after power-up, supports access to hardware drivers, and integrates the hardware-dependent and hardware-independent software. The Curtiss-Wright VME-183 COTS computer board uses one or two NXP (formerly Freescale) MPC7447A/7448 Power Architecture processors with AltiVec technology, and up to 1 GB of DDR1 SDRAM, the VME-183 Single Board Computer provides an ideal platform for general purpose computing.  The VME-183 delivers two 64-bit PMC sites (one supporting 100 MHz PCI-X) and a complement of I/O including Ethernet, up to six serial ports, up to two MIL-STD-1553 channels, SCSI, SATA and two USB 2.0 ports. Verocel has adapted this hardware platform to work with the Wind River VxWorks/Cert 6.6.3 operating system to meet DO-178B/C, Level B assurance.

The BSP includes the Bootloader, which is activated on power up or system reset.  The Bootloader executes from Flash and verifies the CRC (cyclic redundancy check) of the stored software images.  It then copies the software application to RAM, verifies the copy is successful via a second CRC check and then transfers control to the BSP.

The BSP running in RAM:

  • Initializes the hardware devices on the VME-183
  • Setups cache and the memory management unit.
  • Setups and installs the default interrupt and exception handlers.
  • Performs Built-In Test (BIT) for the VME-183 and any optional devices
  • Initializes I/O services and I/O ports used by the software application

Curtiss-Wright VME-183

VME-183 Board Support Package Features

Certified Features of the VME-183 BSP

Verocel can help you develop and certify the BSP of your needs. We can reduce cost, risk and effort by leveraging our library of BSP artifacts that will ease certification of custom and modified board support packages. Click on the link below to request a quotation.