A cockpit depicting the types of advanced avionics graphics applications that can be developed using CoreAVI’s new safety critical graphics and compute platform.
Core Avionics & Industrial Inc. (CoreAVI) unveiled its new Automated Micro Devices (AMD) Radeon E9171-based safety certifiable Vulkan-based graphics and compute driver at Embedded World 2019 in Nuremberg, Germany.
The new driver is the first safety critical Vulkan-based graphics and compute driver, running VkCoreGL SC 1.0.1 OpenGL SC-based libraries, as well as CoreAVI’s DO-254 hardware containing the AMD Embedded Radeon E9171 graphics processing unit (GPU).
CoreAVI’s VkCore SC driver is certifiable to RTCA DO-178C/EUROCAE ED-12C up to Design Assurance Level (DAL) A and is capable of eliminating the need for separate compute and graphics application programmable interfaces (APIs).
During a recent interview with Avionics International, Daniel Herring, senior software engineer at CoreAVI, described how he and a team of engineers developed the newest Vulkan driver for AMD E9171. According to Herring, the company sees the use of the Vulkan driver as a huge step forward for the industry as it enables the use of shader programs to run within graphics processing units.
Vulkan is seen as such a game changer by the embedded safety critical world that Khronos Group announced the creation of their new Vulkan Safety Critical Working Group on the first day of Embedded World 2019. Khronos, an open consortium of embedded hardware and software companies, also created the OpenGL SC specification. The new working group will work to create open standards based on the Vulkan API specification.
Vulkan’s driver architecture is more streamlined than OpenGL and will offer more control over device scheduling, synchronization and resource management for avionics systems integrators, according to Neil Trevett, president of Khronos,
It also enables the use of big single instruction multiple data engines and the integration of computing and calculations into GPUs.
“Combining the flexibility of VkCore SC with AMD’s high-performance Radeon E9171 and our GPM0001 DO-254 graphics processing module IP allows the next generation of applications to experience state-of-the-art graphics and compute capabilities like never before,” Damian Fozard, CoreAVI CEO said of the new safety critical graphics and computing platform.
The company wants to use Embedded World 2019 to demonstrate the ability of its E9171 GPU-based DO-254 safety certifiable 3U VPX graphics module to reduce development and certification cycles required for new safety critical avionics systems.
Amey Deosthali, senior product manager for embedded solutions at AMD, described the new solution as the “industry’s first safety certifiable Vulkan driver, on the AMD Embedded Radeon E9171 GPU-based module.”