Processor can be operated with INTEGRITY RTOS

The minimoduleTQMa6Q-AA based on the i.Mx6 is now supported by the INTEGRITY RTOS from Green Hills Software which is designed to meet the highest requirements regarding safety and reliability. The INTEGRITY RTOS, certified to IEC 61508 SIL 3 and EN 50128 SWSIL 4, is an operating system with a hard real-time, high performance, partitioned architecture with guaranteed resource availability and advanced multicore support.

The INTEGRITY RTOS provides safe separation between applications and guarantees non-interference between applications. Applications can be run with multiple levels of safety on the same processor, or separate certifiable components from non-certifiable components to minimise certification cost.

With the INTEGRITY RTOS supporting the TQMa6x, the module can be used for conventional control jobs and is perfectly suited to applications with a high safety requirement.

The INTEGRITY RTOS’s secure partitioning provides protection from external attacks without degradation of the real-time performance or processor capacity. Green Hills Software has also pre-integrated an extensive range of middleware, which saves the developers valuable time and money in project implementation and is supported by the MULTI integrated development environment (IDE) certified to IEC 61508 SIL 4, EN 50128 SWSIL 4 and ISO 26262 ASIL D. The i.MX6 has both 2D and 3D GPUs that are also fully supported by INTEGRITY.

The combination of reliable hardware from TQ with the INTEGRITY real-time operating system from Green Hills Software forms a solid basis for applications with safety requirements up to SIL 4. Even if adjustments are made for customer projects, this BSP is a good basis for future developments.

All external usable signals of the CPU are available on the TQMa6x module via three cable connectors (2x160 + 1x40 pins) in the 0.8 mm grid. These have been industrially proven by TQ during more than 15 years in service.

The rich and versatile set of peripherals integrated on the module makes it the suitable platform for a variety of application, specifically those taking advantage of virtualisation. The powerful and scalable ARM Cortex-A9 core(s) with a variable clock speed of up to 4x 1GHz offers the perfect match for wide performance range based on the application needs.

A working memory with up to 2Gbytes DDR3L and up to 128Mbytes SPI NOR Flash, as well as up to 16GB eMMC Flash for program and data, is implemented on the TQMa6x. The design is completed by an EEPROM, an RTC and a real-time clock battery buffered from the main board.

For medical, automation, railway or shipping applications, this module with its long-term availability, along with the INTEGRITY RTOS and MULTI IDE, is the best choice for products with a long lifecycle. The next collaboration with the INTEGRITY RTOS will be on the TQMLS102xA Layerscape module and should be available by the end of the first quarter of 2016.