“Solutions for Trustworthy Systems Engineering”

Altreonic NV is an innovative SME focusing on the embedded market with a unified methodology for developing trustworthy solutions. Based on a long experience since the late 1980's, custom engineering services are enabled by in-house developed tools to facilitate an integrated approach in particular for scalable and safety critical embedded software and hardware. The in-house development technology is also made available through a unique Open Technology Licensing model.
The industrial experience is enhanced by a continuous R&D effort, in-house as well as partner in regional as well as European research projects. Recent ones are:

• OpenComRTOS: development of a novel real-time operating system using formal methods. This is still the core RTOS kernel now developed into VirtuosoNext Designer.
• ASIL: a Flanders Drive project to develop a common automotive safety engineering workflow.
• EVOLVE: an EU ITEA project on Evolutionary Verification and Validation of software.
• CRAFTERS: an EU Artemis on developing novel solutions for many/multicore systems.
• OPENCOSS: an FP7 IP project focusing on reducing the cost of certification.
• COMPACT: a regional project on reliability of electronics.
• NoFIST: a EUROCPS project with Thales on porting VirtuosoNext to a mixed criticality platform.

Altreonic is a regular speaker at international conferences and workshops.

VirtuosoNext Designer

One of the the core product of Altreonic is VirtuosoNext Designer, a unique formally developed network-centric real-time programming environment.
VirtuosoNext Designer supports from small microcontrollers to multicore CPUs and networked distributed heterogeneous systems with a very small code size in a topology independent way. The latest release supports fine-grain space and time partitioning, reducing security and safety risk to a minimum.
Current targets supported are ARM Cortex M3/M4/M5/R4/5R, A9, ARC, Freescale PowerPC, TI C66xx DSP, Leon3, MicroBlaze, XMOS, CoolFlux, Win32 and Linux.
VirtuosoNext runtime code is mostly generated from the  Visual Designer (Visual modeling and simulation environment).
It supporting VirtuosoNext application development from single processor, over multicore to multi-processor heterogeneous target systems. By design it allows to cross develop on a PC, develop a simulator and generate then runtime code without modifying the source code.
Complementary tools are:
GoedelWorks: based on an internet portal, it support safety critical projects from early requirements capturing till final code generation.
EventTracer: a graphical tool to visually display execution schedules on a multiprocessor target.

Safe Virtual Machines for C.

Unique is the support for a Safe Virtual Machine that only needs about 3 KBytes. It allows to run binary compiled C code on any processor.

GoedelWorks

GoedelWorks is the web based project support environment for supporting projects from early requirements and specification capturing till product release with an integrated safety standards knowledge base.

KURT

Altreonic is using its own methodology and tools to develop a scalable and modular e-mobility concept code named "KURT". While used as  a research vehicle, the aim is to spin it off as a commercial vehicle. 

Services

Altreonic's team supports customers with design and development services with a focus on low power and smart distributed, fault tolerant control. Other services are: formal development and verification of embedded software;

Licensing

Altreonic's technology and products are available in a low cost Source code as well as an Open Technology License.

Find our corporate brochure attached below. Or go to the on-line version here.

This year the formal community met in Eindhoven (see FM week) . It was a unique opportunity as it brought together specialists from all over the world. It was also one of the first times that several complementary groups held their conference at the same location and in the same week. Altreonic had a well received paper at CPA ("OpenComRTOS: A Runtime Environment for Interacting Entities", see attached pdf). Formal methods are becoming not only mainstream but also a prerequisite in any development that has safety or security requirements. This is now clearly reflected in the recent versions of the IEC61508 and DO-178 safety standards. An interesting keynote was given by Jeannette Wing, professor at Carnegie Mellow and Assistant Director at the US National Science Foundation. While the topic was "Formal Methods for Privacy", she addressed the definition of what is meant with trustworthy systems very well. Simply said: Trustworthy = safety + security + privacy + usability. 

Altreonic has joined the DSP Valley cluster organisation. DSP Valley is a technology network organisation, focusing on the design of hardware and software technology for embedded processing systems.

DSP Valley groups over 50 members that include universities, research institutes and industrial companies. The next even organised by DSP Valley is a Business-to-Business (B2B) Matchmaking Forum on Tuesday December 3th, 2009 at Sportoase in Leuven (Belgium).

See www.dspvalley.com
 

Altreonic has released version 1.2 of its OpenVE with OpenComRTOS, its formally developed network-centric RTOS. This version features an improved link driver model, a much improved build system generating the code for heterogeneous target systems besides other small improvements. The hostserver was also upgraded with more functions to support access to host nodes for e.g. console access and graphics. The OpenTracer was redeveloped as well and now makes it easier to visualise large networks of nodes, including the details of the inter-node interactions.

OpenCookbook is Altreonic's web portal based product for developing systems or products supporting the engineering process from early requirements till the product is released for production. It implements a formalised engineering process providing tracebility between the different project entities (requirements, specifications, models composed of entities, workplan, development, verification, development and validation tasks). The major improvement of this release is the generation of the dependency tree, automatic bidirectional relationship links and a hyperlink document generator to produce a timestamped snapshot of the whole project. OpenCookbook, available for free as a set of drupal modules, can be downloaded from our website.

Altreonic has released v. 1.1 of its OpenVE for OpenComRTOS. This version was improved to better support heterogeneous target systems and has an easier interface to the host server. The Win32 version is available free of charge from our download section. OpenVE now supports a growing number of embedded targets as well (in Single Processor and Multi-Processor versions).

The current list includes: Xilinx MicroBlaze, Leon3, ARM Cortex M3 and the multi-core XMOS

In a demo set-up, boards with all supported targets were seamlessly programmed and demonstrated.

You can experience this seamless heterogeneous real-time processing first hand. For 2995 euro we deliver a bundle containing OpenComRTOS for Win32 and ARM Cortex M3, both supported from within OpenVE, the Event Tracer and  a Luminary LM3S6965 development kit. Applications can be seamlessly distributed over the host PC and the ARM board out-of-the-box. See OpenComRTOS for ARM bundle for more details.

When a crisis becomes an opportunity

The economic crisis we witness today has everything to be considered as a catastrophe, signalling the end of an economic dream. It might however be a lot better to see the crisis as a wake-up call. With hindsight, it is clear the crisis has been growing for about a decade and what we experience now is a painful correction. Rather than stretching the dream, we would do better by standing up and by looking forward. Beating the crisis means we create again real economic value, rather than (over-)consumption.

Developing embedded real-time applications can  be a daunting task. The engineer sits on top of hardware, which has limited memory and processing cycles available, but still the system must meet stringent real-time specifications. If size and power consumption are less of an issue, it can help to use a supersized processor, but that implies that the system is connected to the mains. Often, this is not an option. Power consumption is an environmental issue and size matters. Smaller often means less cost and allows to build smartness in the actuator or sensor itself.

Altreonic has announced the release of OpenComRTOS with support for transparent real-time programming of heterogeneous target systems, including multi-core CPUs. The product will be demonstrated at Embedded World in Nuernberg next week. Nominated for the Embedded Award at Embedded World, OpenComRTOS is the result of a four year effort to develop a network-centric RTOS (Real-Time Operating System).

Think before you begin. Some people might call this wisdom, but it is at the core of systems and software engineering. It serves two main goals: firstly to analyse and to understand and secondly to plan and to predict.

The core of systems engineering is to think ahead. Yes, it might look like it takes more effort but's that often because the team is not yet well versed in it. Training and experience is important. Once achieved, results will be reached faster but the main gain is that the cost of redesign is less likely and also much lower. Thinking ahead means control of the process and being in charge. Read it all in the attached leaflet.

To download the pdf file(s), register first and log in. If you have any problems contact us.