Skip to main content
Logo GMV

Main navigation

  • Sectors
    • Icono espacio
      Space
    • Icono Aeronáutica
      Aeronautics
    • Icono Defensa y Seguridad
      Defense and Security
    • Icono Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte
      Intelligent Transportation Systems
    • Icono Automoción
      Automotive
    • Icono Ciberseguridad
      Cybersecurity
    • Icono Servicios públicos Digitales
      Digital Public Services
    • Icono Sanidad
      Healthcare
    • Icono Industria
      Industry
    • Icono Financiero
      Financial
    • Icono Industria
      Services
    • All Sectors

    Highlight

    Estafas con Inteligencia Artificial
    Scams involving artificial intelligence: types, how to detect them, and prevention measures
  • Talent
  • About GMV
    • Get to Know the Company
    • History
    • Management Team
    • Certifications
    • Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Communication
    • News
    • Events
    • Blog
    • Magazine GMV News
    • Press Room
    • Media library
    • Latest from GMV

Secondary navigation

  • Products A-Z
  • GMV Global
    • Global (en)
    • Spain and LATAM (es - ca - en)
    • Germany (de - en)
    • Portugal (pt - en)
    • Poland (pl - en)
    • All branches and all GMV sites
  • Home

XKY

XKY is a real-time operating system developed by GMV

  • Print
General Information

The XKY hypervisor

XKY is an ARINC 653-compliant time-and-space partitioned real-time operating system (RTOS). It is developed in compliance with the DO-178C/ED-12C standards to offer a IMA system platform for all aircraft embedded levels up to DAL-A.

From its inception, the XKY operating system was designed and created with a hypervisor architecture in mind and the idea of minimizing the code base, all while complying with the requirements for robust partitioning.

It also combines modularity and flexibility with a minimal impact on the system, making it a cost-effective solution for the aviation market.

XKY runs on ARMv8-A, ARMv7-A and 32- and 64-bit PowerPC with multi-core support. Thanks to its modular design, it can also be adapted to other types of CPU by using a tailored BSP.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

Use cases: see the product technical documentation, which provides detailed information on XKY and a case study carried out with Embraer.

XKY

Features

General Information

XKY is a real-time operating system created from the ground up that follows the paradigm used most today in integrated modular avionics (IMA): robust partitioning. Its design emulates the hypervisor architecture, enabling several applications, and even operating systems, to coexist safely on the same hardware. The core of XKY’s partitioning management and a tailored BSP runs directly on the hardware to control and manage guest applications or operating systems.

XKY allows several operating systems to run in several partitions, guaranteeing uninterrupted access to the resources configured for these systems in the design phase. XKY is optimized to support systems in real time, and the common guest is a RTOS.

Key Features

XKY support multi-core processing. Partitions can be scheduled in any number of processing cores, indicating the CPU in which the current partition is allocated to run.

XKY provides fast communication between applications on each partition through sampling ports, queuing ports and shared memory. 

XKY supports external communication via PCIe and Ethernet. These interfaces work directly, without additional actions. Other IO drivers can also be integrated at the partition level.

XKY offers compatibility with the ARINC 653 APEX standard, part 1 (annexes 3 and 4) and selected services from part 2.

Currently, XKY has out-of-the-box BSP for ARMv8-A, ARMv7-A and 32- and 64-bit PowerPC with multi-core support. Support for RISC-V is planned for the near future.

XKY can be certified as platform in aircrafts to comply up to DO-178C/ED-12C DAL-A. 

DO-178C/ED-12C Certification Documentation

We have been working on exhaustively documenting XKY to comply with DO-178C/ED-12C up to level DAL-A. This means that XKY can be used as platform to support the most critical certified aircraft systems in Civil or even Military aviation. Basic documentation is already available.

For questions related to certifiability, please contact us at [email protected].

Use cases

The acronym DIMA stands for distributed integrated modular avionics. Distributed integrated modular avionics (DIMA), sometimes known as 2nd generation IMA, is an emerging architectural pattern for avionics.
Since 2014, GMV has been working with Embraer on a series of projects aimed at implementing a DIMA platform prototype. This platform provides:

  • Flexible use of IT and IO resources
  • Interoperability at the system level
  • Reuse of application components
  • Reconfiguration (plug & play)

If you are interested, you can download the technical documentation on this use case.

Download

Contact

Europaplatz 2
64293 Darmstadt | Deutschland
Tel. +49 6151 3972 970
Fax. +49 6151 8609 415

Zeppelinstraße, 16
82205 Gilching | Deutschland
Tel. +49 (0) 8105 77670 150
Fax. +49 (0) 8105 77670 298

Contact menu

  • Contact
  • GMV around the world

Blog

  • Blog

Sectors

Sectors menu

  • Space
  • Aeronautics
  • Defense and Security
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • Automotive
  • Cybersecurity
  • Digital Public Services
  • Healthcare
  • Industry
  • Financial
  • Services
  • Talent
  • About GMV
  • Shortcut to
    • Press Room
    • News
    • Events
    • Blog
    • Products A-Z
© 2025, GMV Innovating Solutions S.L.

Footer menu

  • Contact
  • Legal Notice
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Impressum

Footer Info

  • Commitment to the Environment
  • Financial Information