News from TTE Systems Ltd
Helping you to meet international safety standards
If your organisation is involved in the development of high-integrity embedded systems which are required to meet international guidelines and standards (such as ISO 26262, DO-178, ISO 13849, IEC 61508, etc), then we may be able to help you to:
- Record (and verify) your system requirements and designs
- Implement and test your system software
- Develop a suitable hardware platform for your system
- Fully test your system using a “hardware in the loop” test facility
- Monitor your finished system “in flight” or “on the road”
- Develop a “safety culture” in your organisation
Free full-day workshop on ISO26262 and related standards (9 February 2012)
Are you involved in the development of high-integrity embedded systems for use in automotive, industrial, aerospace, defence, medical, sectors? Do you need to be able to guarantee that your systems will operate correctly? Do you need to “certify” your systems?
If so, please join TTE Systems and MIRA at a free one-day introductory workshop “Developing high-integrity embedded systems in compliance with ISO 26262 and related standards” on 9 February 2012.
Further information is available …
2012 could be the year in which you transform your job prospects
We offer a certification programme for developers who wish to be able to demonstrate their ability to create reliable embedded systems. For many people, this programme offers a cost-effective way of “refreshing” their CV — and improving their job prospects.
You can begin this challenging certification programme by joining one of our public training courses (in the UK) or by undertaking a ‘distance learning’ course (anywhere in the world).
Further information is available …
5 days of training on ‘Embedded C’ (16 to 20 April 2012)
Using a practical mixture of informal seminars and “hands on” training sessions, our very popular 5-day introductory course on ‘Embedded C’ has been designed to introduce the key skills and techniques needed to implement reliable embedded systems for use in a range of different industry sectors.
This course will next be delivered from 16 to 20 April 2012 in Leicester (UK).
Further information is available.
Our UK team has moved …
During the Christmas / New Year period, our UK staff moved to a much larger office suite (at the same postal address). The new offices will give our rapidly-expanding development team room to breathe, and will also allow us to conduct more of our training courses on our own premises.
At present, our contact details remain unchanged. However, this office move is only a temporary solution. We’ll be recruiting up to 12 new developers in the next few months (please see our Vacancies page for details), and we’re going to run out of space again quite quickly. We’ll therefore be moving to a new building later in 2012. Further information will follow later this year.
Using an RTOS in a reliable embedded system (5-9 March 2012)
Does your company use a real-time operating system (RTOS)? Does every member of your development team fully understand how this RTOS works? If not, can you be sure that your products will operate reliably?
Our popular 5-day course on “Using an RTOS in a reliable embedded system” will be delivered in Leicester (UK) from 5-9 March 2012.
Using a practical mixture of informal seminars and “hands on” training sessions, this 5-day course will help you to understand the ways in which RTOS features (and configuration settings) may have an impact on the behaviour of your embedded systems.
The course considers issues such as conflicts over shared resources and explores practical solutions using “priority inheritance” and related protocols.
Certification issues (linked to IEC 61508 and DO-178b) are also considered.
Lessons learned from the module can be applied when using a wide range of commercial RTOS products.
Further information is available
Design and verification of high-integrity embedded systems (30 July - 3 August 2012)
Our popular 5-day course on “Design and verification of high-integrity embedded systems” will be delivered in Leicester (UK) from 20-24 February 2012.
After attending this course, participants will understand:
- “Why, when and how” to use time-triggered software architectures
- How to choose an appropriate hardware platform
- How to design and implement tasks with deterministic behaviour
- How to carry out static analysis of executable task code to determine worst-case execution time (WCET) and best-case execution time (BCET)
- How to perform schedulability analysis and scheduler configuration for complex task sets
- How to predict and measure maximum CPU loading values
- How to test the resulting design, from the task level (incl. statement coverage and “modified condition / decision coverage” - MCDC) to the system level (incl. the use of both processor simulators and hardware-in-the-loop testbeds)
- How to link all of the above material together in order to meet standards and guidelines such as DO-178, IEC 61508, ISO 26262, EN 50128 and IEC 61513 without imposing high costs on the organisation concerned
Further information is available …
Customer success story in the marine industry: John Lilley & Gillie Ltd
John Lilley & Gillie Ltd has a proud history in the marine industry. Established almost 200 years ago, “Lilley & Gillie” is one of the leading suppliers of nautical equipment and instruments.
For their latest project, the P7007 Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System (BNWAS), Lilley & Gillie opted to use RapidiTTy development tools to create the software.
Places available on Graduate Training Programmes (various start dates)
TTE Systems is lead delivery partner for the University of Leicester’s highly-regarded MSc in Reliable Embedded Systems.
This very popular part-time MSc now forms a key part of the Graduate Training Programmes offered by a number of high-tech companies.
These advanced Graduate Training Programmes operate as follows:
- Students are based with the sponsoring organisation for a two-year period.
- Three times per year, students travel to Leicester to attend intensive MSc modules.
- When not attending modules, students complete their MSc projects and gain work experience (often in various parts of the sponsoring organisation).
- Sponsoring organisations pay all the University fees (totalling £9,360).
- Sponsoring organisations pay students at least £12,000 per year (tax free) while they are studying.
- Successful students can expect to gain invaluable work experience, an advanced MSc qualification and an excellent job offer at the end of the two-year Graduate Training Programme.
These Graduate Training Programmes provide a extremely effective mix of advanced study and hands-on experience in a high-tech organisation: in our view, this combination simply cannot be matched by a conventional (university only) MSc programme. We are therefore not surprised that these programmes have proved to be very popular (with both ambitious students and employers).
Further information is available ….
TTE Systems Ltd and the Midlands Aerospace Allliance
TTE Systems is pleased to announce that it has joined the Midlands Aerospace Alliance.
The Midlands Aerospace Alliance was formed in 2003 to support and represent the aerospace industry across the Midlands region, with help from the regional development agencies Advantage West Midlands and the East Midlands Development Agency.
Dr Michael J. Pont, Chief Executive of TTE Systems, comments, “Joining the MAA at this time is a logical step for TTE Systems, and reflects the importance we attach to our work with aerospace customers and partners in the UK Midlands.”
10-day training packages now available (Various start dates)
You can now join our very popular 5-day courses on “Embedded C” and “Design and verification of high-integrity embedded systems” on dates of your choosing for the total combined fee of just £1200 + VAT.
After attending these two courses, participants will understand:
- “Why, when and how” to use time-triggered software architectures in reliable embedded systems
- How to choose an appropriate hardware platform for reliable embedded systems
- How to design and implement tasks with the characteristics required in reliable systems
- How to carry out static analysis of executable task code to determine worst-case execution time (WCET)
- How to perform schedulability analysis and scheduler configuration for complex task sets
- How to predict and measure maximum CPU loading values.
- How to test the system, from the task level (incl. statement coverage and “modified condition / decision coverage” - MCDC) to the system level (incl. the use of both processor simulators and hardware-in-the-loop testbeds)
- How to link all of the above material together in order to meet standards and guidelines such as DO-178, IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 without imposing high costs on the organisation concerned
Further information is available …
Hardware FPU support now available for all TTE32 processor designs (IEEE 754 compliant)
Full hardware support for floating-point operations is now available in all TTE32 processor designs via the TTE32-FPU. The TTE32-FPU provides a simple and effective way to increase performance for maths-intensive systems (including many control and data acquisition systems). In many cases, performance will increase by 10x (for maths-intensive code): as you would expect from TTE Systems, this increased performance comes without any reduction in temporal predictability.
The TTE32-FPU supports:
- addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, conversion, comparison, moving, negation and absolute value calculation;
- both single and double precision operands (32-bit and 64-bit IEEE-754 floating point values respectively);
- all four rounding modes (round to nearest even, round up/down to infinity and truncate).
Please contact us to find out how you can add a TTE32-FPU to your existing design, very simply and at low cost.
Using an RTOS in reliable embedded systems (5 days of training, 5-9 March 2012)
Does your company use a real-time operating system (RTOS)? Does every member of your development team fully understand how this RTOS works? If not, can you be sure that your products will operate reliably?
Using a practical mixture of informal seminars and “hands on” training sessions, this 5-day course will help you to understand the ways in which RTOS features (and configuration settings) may have an impact on the behaviour of your embedded systems. The course considers issues such as conflicts over shared resources and explores practical solutions using “priority inheritance” and related protocols.
Certification issues (linked to IEC 61508 and DO-178b) are also considered.
Lessons learned from the module can be applied when using a wide range of commercial RTOS products.
Further information is available.
Working on an IEC 61508, ISO 26262 or related system?
Our MoniTTor protection systems can be used to provide a comprehensive independent diagnostic monitoring device, thereby ensuring that “61508”, “26262” - and related systems - can meet certification requirements.
In many cases, MoniTTor protection can be used with off-the-shelf microcontrollers, ensuring that solutions are extremely cost effective - and our automated software development tools ensure that prototypes can be created very quickly.
The ideal way to explore the benefits that MoniTTor protection can provide for your customers is to try our new RapidiTTy 61508 tool suite.
Find us in the UK Space Directory
TTE Systems is pleased to announce that it is now listed in the UK Space Directory 2011.
Dr Michael J. Pont, Chief Executive of TTE Systems, comments, “At present, employment in the UK space sector remains concentrated in the South of England. However, as the 2011 edition of the Space Directory makes clear, there is growing activity in this sector in the Midlands. We are very pleased to be contributing to these excellent growth figures, and - as a company - we expect to see very significant developments in the space sector in the next 12-18 months.”
Consultancy and development services
Is your company involved in the development of reliable embedded systems? Would your team benefit from the help of one or more highly-experienced developers to ensure that you can meet project deadlines - as well as quality and / or safety requirements?
If so, we may be able to help.
Full list of public training courses
- Are you involved in the development of high-integrity embedded systems for use in aerospace, defence, medical, automotive, industrial or related sectors?
- Do you need to be able to guarantee that your systems will operate correctly?
- Do you need to “certify” your systems?
If so, you — or some of your team members — may find one of our training courses useful.
We offer the following 5-day public courses:
- Module A1a: Embedded C
- Module A2a: Design and verification of high-integrity embedded systems
- Module A3a: Design patterns for reliable embedded systems
- Module A3b: Embedded automotive systems using ISO 26262
- Module B1a: Using FPGAs in reliable embedded systems
- Module B2a: Using an RTOS in reliable embedded systems
- Module B3a: Multi-processor and multi-core designs for reliable embedded systems
Staff vacancies
We’ve recruited a further two developers to join our growing team this month. This brings our main recruitment process to a close for this year, but:
- We still have some vacancies for interns
- We expect to recruit up to 12 new System Developers / Senior System Developers early in 2012. Please refer to our vacancies page for further information.