As the number of electronic components of avionics systems is significantly increasing, it is desirable to run several avionics software on a single computing device. In such system, providing a seamless way to integrate separate applications on a computing device is a very critical issue as the Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) concept addresses. In this context, the ARINC 653 standard defines resource partitioning of avionics application software. The virtualization technology has very high potential of providing an optimal implementation of the partition concept. In this paper, we study supports for full virtualization based ARINC 653 partitioning. The supports include extension of XML-based configuration file format and hierarchical scheduler for temporal partitioning. We show that our implementation can support well-known VMMs, such as VirtualBox and VMware and present basic performance numbers.
In embedded systems, such as aerospace crafts and automobiles, it is desirable to run several real-time applications of different criticality on a single computing board by exploiting temporal partitioning. The applications, however, are usually developed by different organizations independently. Thus providing a seamless way to integrate separate applications on a control board guaranteeing real-time requirements and criticality is a very important issue. In this paper, we suggest a partition model with a mechanism that can decide each partition's period and execution time automatically preserving its criticality level. We show that the suggestion can i) prevent a task in a low-criticality partition preempting a task in a high-criticality partition (i.e., criticality inversion) and ii) provide high system throughput. 1
Recentlypartitioning and virtualization techniques for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) of aeronautics sector are proposed as the candidate architecture for safety-critical space applications. However, spacecraft software has subtle difference from aeronautic applications. Radiation particles in space environment cause various faults on the spacecraft computer. Requirement for autonomous operation with constrained resources is more stringent in space missions. Once it is launched, no way to refurbish the spacecraft without tremendous cost. These extra properties on top of those of regular aeronautic systems cause large software development cost in spacecraft projects. Summing up, spacecraft software should have real-time property, fault tolerance and efficient resource usage.In this paper, we introduce a hypervisor for spacecraft computer to improve reusability of inherited flight software from previous missions without redevelopment cycle. Fault tolerance is designed into the hypervisor to provide autonomous operation in space. We designed a prototype which is Type-II full virtualized hypervisor with kernel-level ARINC 653 partitioning on a dual-core LEON4based flight computer for spacecraft. As the guest system, RTEMS-based flight software running on ERC32 flight computer is chosen because it has been used for many recent space missions and its flight software is likely to be reused when multicore LEON4 becomes widely available.
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