Aviation quality COTS software: reality or folly

There is a new wave of COTS software and hardware vendors that understand the rigorous requirements of system certification and they are providing the avionics developer with true COTS solutions. These are not commercial solutions "shoe-horned" into avionics applications, but open standard based products that have been developed specifically to meet the requirements of avionics certification. Using the Seaweed Systems OpenGL subset Application Programming Interface (API) as an example, this paper describes in detail, the techniques used to take an open standard graphics API (OpenGL) and turn it into an avionics COTS product that can offer significant savings for systems developers. A from-scratch implementation has all the quality, safety, and performance attributes required to meet the stringent certification requirements for airborne systems. COTS products specifically developed to meet the certification requirements of avionics systems significantly reduce the risk and offer a huge cost advantage over in house development. Cost models clearly illustrate the risk and development advantages of using COTS targeted for avionics certification. The paper will provide key questions to ask COTS vendors.