O.C.E. Technology (www.ocetechnology.com), an Irish space technology company, today announced that it has signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop a multicore real-time operating system ‘OCEOSmp’ for use in mission critical software.

A Microchip Technology (www.microchip.com) development group based in Dublin will participate in the project and provide input on requirements specific to the PolarFire® System-on-Chip Field Programmable Gate Array (SoC FPGA) which offers five RISC-V cores for computer intensive applications.

OCEOSmp has unique patent-pending features that provide high reliability and efficiency in running software on the multi-core computer systems increasingly in use by ESA and other national space agencies. It simplifies policing activities in the system and allows problems to be anticipated and dealt with before they become critical. Cores can be taken out of use when faults are detected or to reduce power consumption and returned to use when appropriate.

It can be configured to use only a subset of the available cores with other cores reserved for use by other systems and distributes the application tasks symmetrically across the cores it uses for maximum efficiency. OCEOSmp will be compliant with ESA’s safety level B regulations for spacecraft, with the initial version capable of supporting from 1 to 255 RISC-V, SPARC or ARM cores.

The operating system can also be used in automotive and medical applications such as engine management, emissions monitoring, therapeutic devices, dialysis machines and other high reliability systems.

Barry Kavanagh, CEO, O.C.E. Technology, said, “We are very excited to be working with Microchip Technology on this development.” 

He added, “O.C.E. is currently selling to the aerospace market but OCEOSmp is creating new opportunities for the company in other high-growth and global markets such as the smart manufacturing and medical industries.”

“Customers designing mission-critical systems face the most challenging requirements for safety, security and reliability,” said, Cyril Jean, Associate Director of IP Engineering, Microchip Technology.  “PolarFire SoC offers unmatched reliability and compute performance with our RISC-V based architecture which OSEOSmp can leverage to provide a complete high reliability solution for our most demanding space customers.”

O.C.E. Technology, headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, is supported by Enterprise Ireland and develops software for high-reliability applications.