BlackBerry QNX SDP acquires a Future Airborne Capabilities Environment

BlackBerry announced on August 2 that its QNX software development platform 7.1 has achieved compliance with the General Purpose Technical Standard for Defense Vehicle Airborne Capability Environment (FACE).

The FACE technical standard is an open standard that supports the development of portable components of safety and security profiles. It uses industry standards for distributed communications, operating systems, and programming languages, as well as general computing software infrastructure. The goal is to reduce development time and cost so that newer technologies can be integrated faster.

In addition to the new FACE certification, QNX’s software development platform has a large number of other industry certifications, including POSIX PSE54, ISO 25252 ASIL D for automobiles, and IEC 61508 SIL3 for electronic systems.

The platform includes a suite of development technologies including Neutrino Real-Time OS, Memntics Toolkit and QNX Software Center. Together, they provide a secure real-time operating system for x86 and ARM platforms. In addition, its development environment is designed to be familiar to any developer working with Linux.

This isn’t the first time BlackBerry has dived into the defense industry. The company has been in the business for 40 years, and has built mission-critical systems for aerospace and defense companies around the world.