How much of a challenge is vendors not having or not sharing information about platform components?

Most suppliers that provide multicore platform components to avionics customers are aware of the need to provide detailed documentation and support. However, there can still be issues with IP blocks that have been embedded on a supplied board, for which the vendor has no access to the documentation from their supplier. In these cases, it can become potentially blocking if the information cannot be obtained, or is difficult to obtain, for example requiring additional legal or procurement costs.

In some cases, the only option for achieving A(M)C 20-193 evidence related to such a device’s interference channels may be to perform testing as a black box or reverse engineering the device in question. Such approaches should be discussed with your certification authority as they may not be viable in all cases. In our MACH¹⁷⁸ solution, we recommend a means to de-risk platform selection through the Hardware Resource Identification procedure, using the principles described in the Processor Selection Considerations white paper. Both documents are available in MACH¹⁷⁸ Foundations.