Organizations operating in safety-critical domains must ensure that their systems protect personnel, equipment, and the surrounding environment. Functional safety certification—while rigorous and resource-intensive—is essential for building market credibility and competitive advantage.
Wind River recently introduced two key enhancements to strengthen certification support for intelligent edge systems:
- Broader processor support under the IEC 61508 industrial safety standard.
- New support for hardware platforms covered by Intel’s Airworthiness Evidence Package (AEP), enabling more efficient aerospace certification.
🛡️ Wind River’s Functional Safety Foundation #
Helping customers achieve functional safety certification efficiently and cost-effectively is a core value of the Wind River Helix (VxWorks) RTOS and the Wind River Helix Hypervisor platforms.
When developing on the Wind River Helix Hypervisor or the safety-certified VxWorks Cert Edition, customers only need to certify the code they create—not the underlying operating system. For system-level certifications (such as full aircraft airframes), Wind River provides the required certification evidence to support approval.
Both platforms are backed by decades of deployment and industry certifications, including:
- Aerospace: RTCA DO-178C / EUROCAE ED-12C DAL A
- Industrial: IEC 61508 SIL 3
- Automotive: ISO 26262 ASIL-D
- Medical: IEC 62304 Class C
The Hypervisor holds equivalent certifications in aerospace, automotive, and industrial markets, giving developers a trusted software foundation and significantly reducing project risk.
🏭 Industrial Expansion With IEC 61508 SIL 3 Support #
Wind River has held IEC 61508 SIL 3 certification since 2018, but recently expanded the Wind River Helix RTOS to support Arm Cortex-A53 processors based on the Armv8-A 64-bit architecture.
Why Cortex-A53 Matters #
- A widely adopted processor in industrial automation and edge devices.
- Balances performance, power efficiency, and cost—typically deployed in quad-core configurations.
- Ideal for multi-threaded workloads such as HMIs, edge analytics, and data acquisition.
Customer Benefits #
Using the already-certified RTOS significantly shortens the certification timeline, enabling industrial vendors to reach the market faster with compliant, reliable products.
✈️ Intel AEP Integration for Aerospace Certification #
Intel’s Airworthiness Evidence Package (AEP) provides detailed, non-public documentation that helps developers certify Intel hardware and software components for use in airborne safety-critical systems.
Supported Processors #
The quad-core Intel Core i7-1186 GRE (Tiger Lake UP3) is covered under Intel’s AEP. The Intel Core i7-1185 GRE, a functionally equivalent variant, is also confirmed as supported.
This enables aerospace developers to build and test software early—before final certification hardware is deployed.
Supported Hardware Platforms #
Wind River now supports two ruggedized COTS platforms using the 1186 processor:
- North Atlantic Industries 68INT6 single-board computer
- Supermicro STS-E100-12T-H, valued for its configurability in mission-critical deployments
System-Level Advantages #
- Deterministic performance from Wind River Helix RTOS on the NAI 68INT6
- Mixed-criticality consolidation enabled by Wind River Helix Hypervisor
- Optimized SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power)—crucial for aerospace platforms
- Hardware alignment with Intel AEP helps streamline aircraft airframe certification
Wind River’s expanded industrial support and deeper aerospace integration reinforce its leadership in delivering safe, reliable intelligent edge platforms. These improvements ensure customers can meet certification requirements with reduced risk and faster time-to-market—whether building next-generation industrial controllers or mission-critical avionics systems.