RTEMS has become poupular in the Space Domain due to its free availability, its small footprint, its quality (ECSS qualified) and its multicore (SMP) option.

RTEMS Space Qualification

RTEMS is the first Open Source OS that has been pre-qualified by the European Space Agency (ESA). The qualification is based on technology developed by embedded brains for most efficient delta qualifications.

RTEMS Qualification Data Packages

Public QDP (provided by ESA)

This is an inital ECSS Cat. C QDP funded by ESA for RTEMS 5 using SMP on Gaisler GR712RC and GR740 processors using a basic feature set. (https://rtems-qual.io.esa.int/)

Our QDP Services

We adapt the public QDP according to customers demand, e.g. for other processors, new feature sets and interfaces. This ensures you swift delivery at set cost. And, due to a cost-sharing-model, it is more economical than everyone doing it on their own.

What we do

  • Check hardware specification and errata
  • Add requirements documentation for the configuration to be qualified
  • Configure software setup to run RTEMS on target board
  • Adapt toolchain
  • Adapt tests
  • Run tests
  • Optimize code for 100% code and branch coverage
  • Revise and complete documentation

→ Compile (with many other documents) to a consistent QDP

What you get

  • Complete documentation for the qualification process incl static code checker results form Coverity, CLANG, and CppCheck, product and process metrics, assessment of testing and validation activities, and problem and non-conformance reports
  • ECSS Cat. C (or Cat. B with additional ISVV), based on RTEMS 6
  • Includes clock driver, interrupt-controller, console-driver, MPU, cache controller
  • Tailored according to the ESA reference QDP for RTEMS
  • Additional features on request

Our RTEMS Space Products

SoCs1   BSP2 QDP
fentISS XtratuM / XNG Hypervisor23 ✔/on request on request
AMD Xilinx Zynq 7000 Series
Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC and/or RFSoC
Versal Adaptive SoC		 ✔
✔
✔		 ✔
✔
✔
Gaisler GR712RC
GR716A and GR716B
GR740
GR765
Noel-V
UT699/UT699E/UT700		 ✔
on request
✔
on request
✔
✔		 ✔ (public)
on request
✔ (public)
on request
on request
on request
Microchip PolarFire SoC
SAMRH707 – Radiation Hardness
SAMRH71 – Radiation Hardened
SAMV71Q21RT – Radiation Tolerance
SAM V, SAM E & SAM S MCUs		 ✔
✔
✔
✔
✔		 on request
on request
on request
on request
on request
NanoXplore NG-ULTRA ✔ on request
Teledyne LS1046-Space
Products based on NXP Layerscape
QorIQ P-Series and QorIQ T-Series		 on request
on request
✔		 on request
on request
✔
Texas Instruments TMS570LC4357, TMS570LS3137 ✔ on request
Vorago VA 41600, VA 41620, VA 41628,
VA 41629, VA 41630		 on request
on request		 on request
on request

1) Other SoCs on request
2) Includes development tools support
3) Possible hosts and configurations on request

Boards & Systems BSP QDP
DSI OBC (LEON-3FT dual core) on request on request
ZIN SBCFA1000 / SAMRH71 SBC on request on request
Drivers / Interfaces / Features   BSP QDP
POSIX API, OpenMP, LwIP              ✔ on request
Drivers (e.g. CAN, SpaceWire, MIL-STD-1553)   ✔ / on request on request
NASA cFS, micro-ROS, Klepsydra AI   ✔ / on request ✔ / on request

Development Tool Support

All our products come along with comprehensive support to integrate RTEMS into a customer specific development workflow (e.g. Visual Studio Code, Github and Gitlab structures, continuous integration using simulators and real hardware) as well as support for advanced diagnose tools like Trace Compass to optimize scheduling or time critical procedures.

Further Advantages of our QDPs

  • Customization of the QDPs to your specific circumstances
  • Coordination of the source code with the RTEMS community and the RTEMS community git repo
  • RTEMS code bug tracking
  • Gnu toolchain bug tracking
  • Long-term availability and maintenance
  • Fast development and qualification processes

FAQ

The European Space Agency ESA, as well as other certifiers, require that software development is compliant with the ECSS standards ECSS-E-ST-40C and ECSS-Q-ST-80C Rev.1. Here, RTEMS is considered a “reusable software component.” The Qualification Data Package (QDP) consists of a set of documents proving that RTEMS has been developed according to ECSS requirements and verified on the target hardware. The requirements vary depending on the safety category (A-D), in which case independent secondary verification is sometimes required). The ECSS standard is comparable to other safety standards, such as IEC 61508, ISO 26262, DO-178, DO-330, DO-333 and the Galileo Software Standard (GSWS).

Beyond the formal requirements, compliance with the ECSS standard is very useful for optimizing operational and functional safety. In addition to the functional tests, you also receive detailed performance measurements that can be used to estimate and optimize the runtime characteristics of your application.

The basic RTEMS code is similar for both versions, however some features have been removed for the qualified RTMES. This is true for dynamic memory re-allocation, file systems, and for the POSIX API. On demand such functions can be included, though.

The QDP delivered is ready to be submitted to ESA and complies to the same standards as the ESA reference QDP for the Gaisler processors. ESA may require to run the tests on your hardware. We can do this to generate the QDP as well (normally via remote access).
Finally you will have to add your application software to be qualified on top of RTEMS – what is a story on its own. This is why RTEMS is labelled “pre-qualified”: The OS on its own meets the qualification requirements, but the final qualification would have to include the application software. We will asist you for all steps in this process.

How our QDP is produced

Safety Certification with Turbo

In many domains, safety certification is necessary, for example in aerospace, medical technology, and automotive engineering. This process is very time-consuming, since all possible system states and reactions must be mapped and all possible errors must be handled in a controlled manner. Certification often costs much more effort than the actual programming — and it is therefore rarely updated. Open source software in contrast, however, stands for rapid development and fast bug fixing.

embedded brains, with the support of ESA (European Space Agency), has developed a maximally automated qualification process. Based on a complex concatenation of definitions, requirements and individual tests, which communicate by means of a formalized “language”, the qualification can be performed largely automatically. This does not replace formal definitions and test procedures, but it simplifies delta qualifications enormously. This means that adaptations and additions to the source code can be carried out very quickly — and thus cost-effectively.

Verifications Performed

  • Static Code Checker Results from Coverity, CLANG, and CppCheck
  • Product and process metrics
  • Evaluation of test and validation activities
  • Problem and non-conformance reports
  • 100% Code & Branch Coverage