QNX unveils first RTOS to offer both safety and security certification

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that QNX always likes to make a big splash at the annual embedded world conference. Well, the big splash for this year is now public: QNX has taken the covers off the first RTOS product to provide both safety and security certification.

Yesterday, QNX announced QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus, which offers both IEC 61508 certification at Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3) and Common Criteria ISO/IEC 15408 certfication at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+).

The goal of this product is simple: To help developers of railway control systems, medical devices, automotive systems, wind turbines, and other mission-critical applications reduce the time and expense of certifying their end-products.

You see, safety and security certification at the system level can cost millions of dollars and take years to achieve. Using a pre-certified OS can help cut that cost and accelerate certification efforts. A few operating systems provide safety or security certification, but not both. QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus is the first OS to fill this gap.

Whitepapers
Chris Hobbs, a kernel developer at QNX, has authored several papers on creating applications that meet rigorous reliability and functional safety requirements, including IEC 61508 SIL 3. For a list of these papers, see my previous blog post.