Demonstration of FACE-Conformant Arm-Based Digital Cockpit Flight Display

Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions Division has publicly demonstrated a Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) conformant digital cockpit flight display running on its 3U VPX V3-1708 DO-254 safety-certifiable NXP Layerscape LX2160A Arm processor board.

In collaboration with Wind River, Ansys, and CoreAVI, the demonstration took place at this year’s MOSA Industry & Government Summit & Expo.

Developers and integrators of next-generation mission-critical embedded display systems face the challenge of rapidly developing, integrating and fielding new and complex capabilities. These challenges can be addressed through use of open standards that support a Modular Open System Approach (MOSA) and Curtiss-Wright’s COTS Safety-Certifiable hardware product suite.

The demonstration showcased how all sixteen NXP Layerscape processor cores can be utilized while running a DO-178C DAL A RTOS. The demo hardware featured Curtiss-Wright’s V3-717 3U VPX safety-certifiable AMD E8860 graphics board using CoreAVI graphics drivers, highlighting a proven small form factor (SFF) solution for quickly integrating avionics applications using high-performance DAL-A safety certifiable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. The demo application featured a Multi-Touch Cockpit Display Application developed with Ansys SCADE software running on the FACE conformant Wind River Helix Virtualization Platform, a multi-core, multi-tenant, DO-178C DAL A certifiable type 1 hypervisor-based solution.

Brian Perry, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, commented: “Curtiss-Wright is an industry leader in providing safety-certifiable COTS hardware solutions that deliver the latest technology to military system designers, enabling them to use MOSA and FACE to simplify their logistics and boost interoperability. We are excited to support this collaborative effort that extends our MOSA-based hardware support of FACE compliant solutions on the Wind River Helix Virtualization Platform.“

Michel Chabroux, Vice President of Product Management at Wind River, stated: “The demonstration at MOSA Summit 2024 builds on Wind River’s long history of delivering FACE conformant solutions in collaboration with leaders in the aerospace and defense industry. Proven solutions developed from close relationships with companies including Curtiss-Wright, Ansys, and CoreAVI reduce risk and cost, and speed development for next generation MOSA platforms.“

Dr. Olaf Kath, VP of Product and General Manager of the Ansys Systems MBSE and PIDO business unit, said: “At Ansys, we believe in collaborative engagements based on open standards and interoperable technologies. We are very pleased to work with our partners toward a common goal: to enable our joint customers to successfully satisfy MOSA objectives. This is digital systems engineering at its best.“