The Open Group has announced that it has partnered with a consortium of leading European real-time technology developers, industrial manufacturers and research organisations to develop a new model-based software development framework for complex real-time systems in aerospace and defence. Supported by the European Commission, the model-based Methods and Tools for Avionics and Surveillance Embedded Systems (MADES) project is investing over €3.5 million to develop an advanced framework covering all phases of real-time systems development - from design to code generation and deployment. This platform-independent framework will maintain the robust reliability essential for safety and mission-critical applications while providing improvements in developer productivity, reusability of code, and lower costs for maintenance and retargeting to newer multicore platforms. Led by TXT e-solutions, an aerospace and defence engineering company, the MADES consortium includes The Open Group; University of York; Polytechnic University of Milan; Cassidian, an EADS company and worldwide leader in global security solutions and systems; and Softeam, an embedded systems technology supplier specialising in tools for advanced model driven architectures. Softeam is directing the research to ensure the MADES project results meet the highest level of standards for reliability and real-time performance within the industry. The strategic objective of the MADES project is to develop new model-based verification and simulation methods, along with new model-based code generation methods and tools that will address both conventional programming languages and hardware description languages. The MADES tools will provide developers the ability to more easily reuse existing software components, ensure consistency of complex systems, and exploit advanced multicore hardware platforms. “Embedded systems developers require new tools and methods based on recognised standards to design complex applications utilising model-driven development methods,” said Flavio Fusetti, director of aerospace and defence business at TXT e-solutions. “The MADES project will provide an evolutionary path that integrates existing development methods providing a way forward to more advanced model-based design. These development techniques will also enable real-time systems developers to achieve higher performance levels, greater reliability, and scalability with increasingly sophisticated multicore platforms.” www.mades-project.org www.txtgroup.com
