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.

O.C.E. Technology (www.ocetechnology.com), an Irish space technology company, today announced the formal release of OCEOS, the company’s real-time operating system for high reliability applications.
The OCEOS software, which the company has successfully tested at the European Space Agency (ESA), occupies a tiny amount of memory and includes the operational checks and recovery procedures required for mission critical subsystems on satellites and other spacecraft.
The software, which is compliant with ESA’s safety level B regulations for spacecraft, is currently available for ARM and SPARC single-core processors with conversion to the more powerful multicore computer architecture already in progress.
OCEOS is also considered suitable for automotive and medical applications such as engine management, emissions monitoring, therapeutic devices, and dialysis machines.
The company is currently seeking non-space reference applications for the operating system with offers of discounted software and support to interested companies.

Barry Kavanagh, CEO, O.C.E. Technology, said, “We are very excited to have developed and successfully demonstrated only the second safety category B operating system for the European Space Agency. OCEOS has some unique features such as prevention of software deadlocks and precision timing for control outputs.”
He added, “O.C.E. is currently selling to the aerospace market but OCEOS is creating new opportunities for the company in other high-growth and global markets such as the automotive and medical industries and O.C.E. is offering discounted licences and support to new customers in these markets.”
O.C.E. Technology, headquartered at NovaUCD, in Dublin, develops software for technical applications and supplies radiation-hardened chip-level components targeted primarily at the space and high-reliability sectors.
O.C.E. is already operating in Europe, Korea, China, and Singapore through a network of distributors.

O.C.E. Technology has today presented and demonstrated its new artificial intelligence (AI) chip for embedded vision applications at the 2nd European Workshop on On-Board Data Processing. This virtual event is being hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).

The new AI chip called hisaor, from the Irish phrase for artificial intelligence (intleacht shaorga), incorporates eight GPUs and 8 neural network accelerators as an AI co-processing unit. Four ARM Cortex-A9 processors are the primary processing unit for the main operating system. Hisaor also includes multiple on-chip camera interfaces and video encoding and decoding units along with multiple high-speed bus interfaces.

• 

Barry Kavanagh, CEO, O.C.E. Technology, said, “Hisaor will enable new space applications to process high-resolution video and hyperspectral on satellites minimising download data quantities and providing faster response to terrestrial data collected from onboard sensors.”

He added, “The hisaor development environment is based on VeriSilicon’s Vivante Acuity™ software tools which make it easy for embedded developers to port their AI models trained in the cloud and execute these models on the chip. I see this as one of the main strengths of the product.”

• 

Hisaor was a joint development with Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science & Technology Co. Ltd. (300053.SZ) and is based on a collection of mature IP from leading companies. Work has also started on porting OCE’s safety-approved real-time operating system OCEOS to the hisaor platform.

O.C.E. Technology is also actively targeting the new technology at non-space applications such as autonomous vehicles, medical devices and intelligent manufacturing.

O.C.E. Technology, an Irish space technology company, today announced that it has successfully demonstrated OCEOS, a new real-time operating system for microcontrollers on spacecraft, at the European Space Agency (ESA).

The OCEOS software occupies a tiny amount of memory and includes the operational checks and recovery procedures required for mission critical subsystems on satellites and other spacecraft.

The software, which is compliant with ESA’s safety category B regulations for spacecraft, is currently available for ESA SPARC processors with conversion to the more popular ARM computer architecture already in progress.

OCEOS is also considered suitable for automobile and medical applications such as engine management, emissions monitoring, therapeutic devices and dialysis machines.

Barry Kavanagh, CEO, O.C.E. Technology, said, “We are very excited to have developed and successfully demonstrated only the second safety category B operating system approved for the European Space Agency. OCEOS has some unique features such as prevention of software deadlocks and precision timing for control outputs. O.C.E. is currently selling to the aerospace market but OCEOS will create new opportunities for the company in other high-growth and global markets such as automotive and medical.”

O.C.E. Technology, headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin, develops software for technical applications and supplies radiation-hardened chip-level components targeted primarily at the space and high-reliability sectors.

O.C.E. is already operating in Europe, Korea, China, Russia and Singapore through a network of distributors.

O.C.E., an Enterprise Ireland supported company, also supplies a range of satellite subsystems including solar cells, batteries, and attitude control units. These subsystems are already well proven on the Chinese space programme.

Another five small satellites using OCE technology were launched on Thursday 19 September using a Long March 11 rocket from a mobile platform at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Four of the five Earth observation satellites are hyperspectral and the other high resolution video. These satellites use OCE’s E698PM as the processor for the main on-board computer and also OCE’s system-in-package memories.

 

The Zhuhai-1 remote sensing micro-satellite constellation is a commercial satellite constellation built and operated by Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science and Technology Co., Ltd.

The first satellites of the Zhuhai-1 satellite constellation were launched in 2017 and 2018 respectively, initiating the launch and operation of satellite constellations by private companies in China.

The video satellites have a launch mass of 90 kg and feature a high-resolution video system for earth observation with a spatial resolution of 0.9 m and a swath width of 22.5 km. It can capture video sequences of 120 seconds.

The hyperspectral satellites have a ground resolution of 10 m and a swath width of 150 km. The spectral resolution is 2.5 nm.

All satellites are operating in a 500km sun-synchronous orbit.

The satellite data is being used for more effective and efficient management of natural resources, improved ecological environments, agriculture and rural areas, traffic management, emergency management, urban construction and financial insurance.