AdaCore Releases GNAT Pro Safety-Critical For ARM Processors

ARM processors are becoming more and more prevalent in the aerospace, defence, and transportation industries. This is due in large part to the vibrant support ecosystem that ARM enjoys, and to the growing popularity of these low-cost, low-power microprocessors.

The ARM platform adds to the GNAT Pro Safety-Critical product offering, which is already available for PowerPC and LEON boards, allowing easy portability among all three platforms. The technology does not require any underlying operating system, so it can be deployed on very small memory boards. The tool suite includes the following:

• Support for Ada 2012 (including the important “contract-based programming” features that make it easier to reflect the program’s intent) and all earlier versions of the Ada language
• Support for the Ravenscar tasking profile
• A set of static analysis tools
- GNATstack stack analysis tool
- GNATmetrics complexity metrics tool
- GNATcheck coding standard verification tool
• The GNATtest unit test harness generator
• The GDB visual debugger
• A native Integrated Development Environment as well as an Eclipse plug-in

GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for bareboard ARM supplies a fully configurable / customizable run-time library and implements High-Integrity profiles that are especially relevant to safety-critical systems. The Zero Footprint Profile in particular defines an Ada subset that does not require any run-time routines, thus reducing the memory footprint to user code only.

“This new offering shows our commitment to providing a complete safety-oriented development toolset on a large range of targets,” stated Cyrille Comar, Managing Director of AdaCore. “This allows customers to benefit from the richness of the hardware platforms used by the wider market beyond safety-critical systems”

About GNAT Pro Safety-Critical

GNAT Pro Safety-Critical is a complete development environment for applications that need to meet the highest levels of safety-related standards found in industries such as aeronautics, space, railway, defense and medical systems. The product consists of the full GNAT Pro environment enhanced with a suite of tools — specifically GNATcheck, GNATmetric, and GNATstack — and specialized run-time libraries designed for usage in a safety certification context.

Owing to both the product’s technical features and the Ada language’s software engineering foundations, GNAT Pro Safety-Critical facilitates formal compliance with domain-specific safety standards. In addition to supporting RTCA DO-178B / DO-178C (also known as EUROCAE ED-12B / ED-12C), GNAT Pro Safety-Critical can help reduce the effort in certifying systems against standards such as DEF STAN 00-55 / 00-56 (defense), DO-278 / DO-278A (ground-based systems), CENELEC EN 50128 (rail) and ECSS-E-ST-40C / ECSS-Q-ST-80C (space). GNAT Pro Safety-Critical has been used to develop systems that have been certified to DO-178B Level A.

GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for ARM processors is immediately available.