The Marines had an entire MOS dedicated to it, 4067 Ada programmer. That was when LCPL (E-3) could own the software for a chuck of the supply system and make changes with almost no oversight... Man those were the days!
Worked in the defence industry for a few years in the 2000s. I worked on exactly one Ada project. The rest were C/C++. I presume the shift away from Ada has accelerated if anythinng.
Thank you for sharing this! I'd love to know more about what led them to develop their own CPU, and what the instruction set looks like. It looks like AdaCore actually merged their support for VISIUMCore into upstream GCC.
The slides state it features SEU detection/correction, which is pretty interesting.
One interesting project is Saab Gripen jet fighter, whose entire software stack (other than software that is treated as "black box" firmware of certain physical components) is written in Ada, and AFAIK every sale includes complete source code and SDK to make modifications.
The DOD mandate was very short-lived, and many projects sought and received exemptions to it. So it's not surprising that, at that time, you only saw one project.
"NVIDIA began implementing SPARK in its security strategy in 2019 on select pieces of firmware. They began training additional personnel in SPARK and eventually developed an in-house training program.
Several NVIDIA teams are now using SPARK for a wide range of applications that include image authentication and integrity checks for the overall GPU firmware image, BootROM and secure monitor firmware, and formally verified components of an isolation kernel for an embedded operating system, to name just a few."[0]
> NVIDIA is working with AdaCore to implement Ada and SPARK programming languages into certain firmware elements to reduce this potential error. In this webinar you will learn how the combination of NVIDIA hardware with Ada and SPARK delivers robustness and security, improving efficiency and safety in the development pipeline.
