Architecture Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP): A Key Component of the DoD Digital Engineering Strategy

Challenging problems associated with system software complexity growth are threatening industry’s ability to build next generation safety- and security-critical embedded cyber physical weapon systems including vertical lift avionics systems. Contributors to these problems include the growth of software enabled capabilities, interaction complexity in system integration, and ambiguous, missing, incomplete, and inconsistent requirements. Problems continue to hamper systems in the areas of resource utilization, timing and scheduling, concurrency and distribution, and safety and security. A new approach called Architecture Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP), based on the SAE International® Aerospace Standard AS5506C Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), is being developed and investigated by the United States (US) Army to address these challenges. ACVIP is a compositional, quantitative, architecture-centric, model-based approach enabling virtual integration analysis in the early phases and throughout the lifecycle to detect and remove defects that currently are not found until software, hardware, and systems integration and acceptance testing.