The high levels of safety and reliability required for many avionics applications means that the industry has traditionally focussed on building separate highly reliable Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) rather than fully integrated systems. The recent trend in avionics however is to adopt a different approach: Leading avionics companies, such as BAE Systems, Honeywell and Thales are now developing Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) systems that utilise powerful current generation microprocessors (like the MPC750). IMA systems execute a number of functions on the same microprocessor, leading to more complex software architectures employing real-time operating systems. The Airbus A380 is the first commercial aircraft to use IMA. These technology trends make the timing behaviour of systems more difficult to analyse. A practical approach to worst-case execution time analysis in IMA systems is required. In a recent report, the certification authorities recognised that an automated process to analyse these systems based on an integration of testing and analysis, as RapiTime provides, is a valid and viable approach.

BAE Systems have recently adopted RapiTime technology to analyse the execution time performance of software components on the Open Architecture Mission Computer of the Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer.

More information about BAE Systems' experience using RapiTime is available here.