Real-Time OS for Rail Systems

Next-gen train control and automation (ATP, PTC, ETCS) and railway management systems are complex and critical, and safety certifying them can be difficult—especially if you use an open source OS such as Linux^®. Using a pre-certified OS or hypervisor can significantly simplify your development and accelerate certification while enabling the real-time performance you need.

Pre-certified foundational software lowers your risk and reduces the time and effort needed to safety-certify your systems. QNX^® OS for Safety is pre-certified for use in applications requiring IEC 61508 SIL 3 and can be used as a software element out of context in systems certified to EN 50128 and other applicable standards.

Highly reliable, robust software systems for rail require a fail-proof foundation that can be maintained for decades. They must boot quickly, run deterministically, contain functional safety and cybersecurity protections—and never crash. With an open-source or monolithic OS, configuration, scheduling and prioritization are not easy, and a problem with a service or component can crash the whole system as all OS services run in the kernel space.

The QNX microkernel OS architecture provides the temporal and spatial isolation needed to ensure system reliability. It is the foundation for the QNX^® Neutrino^® RTOS as well as the QNX^® Hypervisor that can consolidate diverse and mixed-criticality systems on a single system on a chip (SoC).

While Linux is popular for prototypes, certifying a safety-critical production system built with Linux is nearly impossible. All BlackBerry QNX products are POSIX-compliant, so you can easily port to a QNX OS at any point in your software development lifecycle.

The QNX^® Software Development Platform looks and feels like Linux and uses the familiar Eclipse development environment, including the GNU compiler collection. For infrastructure systems with a mix of old and new software, the QNX Hypervisor allows you to run diverse OSs on a single SoC. BlackBerry QNX also offers board support packages (BSPs) and engineering services to further streamline development.

With long-lived railway management systems, software is a major cost factor. Although an open-source OS or hypervisor may be “free,” maintaining them can monopolize the time of your developers with updates, feature implementations, testing, configuration and quality assurance. The right OS can reduce that burden—especially if you choose BlackBerry QNX, a provider of reliable embedded OS for over 40 years.

We provide product support, manage OS maintenance and ensure all security and other updates are extensively tested. Our unique microkernel architecture also lets you share drivers and applications across systems because they are not bound to the kernel.

All types of railway management systems (control, signalling, traffic, maintenance, operations) are increasingly integrated and connected—and at risk of being targeted by cyberattacks. A cybersecurity breach could cause mayhem and put workers, passengers and the public at risk.

The unique microkernel architecture of the QNX Neutrino RTOS provides a layered approach to cybersecurity. With more than 70 options to restrict processes and root-level access removed by default, security controls won’t hamper system functionality or performance. Additionally, the secure QNX Over the Air solution, managed PKI authentication, FIPS-certified encryption with BlackBerry^® Certicom^® and our cybersecurity services can help you build a secure system.