In recent years, a plethora of DO-254 products have been made available to assist with the full DO254 hardware development lifecycle. These products include:
- DO-254 hardware development tools including DO-254 synthesis and DO-254 simulation
- DO-254 compliant boards and DO-254 fabrication
- DO-254 requirements management tools to ensure hardware requirements and artifacts comply with DO254
- DO-254 traceability to perform required DO-254 top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top traceability
- DO-254 verification tools to assist with meeting DO254’s verification and validation requirements
- DO-254 coverage tools to ensure tests cover all the hardware structures applicable to that level of hardware
Today, DO-254 is increasingly utilized beyond its original intent of avionics developed for commercial aircraft flying in U.S. airspace. Now, many foreign countries, militaries, spacecraft, ground-based systems, and other safety-critical embedded systems are adopting DO-254 or a variant. As an indirect result, dozens (and soon, hundreds) of 3rd party tool vendors provide hardware related tools specifically tailored to meet DO-254's stringent requirements.
Is DO-254 really the best standard for safety critical hardware? That is debatable. What is not debatable is that DO-254 has literally taken over the world's mindshare for hardware quality. As the founders of the world's largest avionics services company said: "We think the vagaries of DO-254 make it the worst standard in the world � except for all the others." (HighRely Incorporate d quotation, copyright 2008.)The DO-254 Industry Group brings together all users, developers and providers of DO-254 related tools. For additional information on specific DO-254 tools, please peruse these pages and request additional information info@do254site.com