Overcoming the Interoperability Barrier in Mixed-Criticality Systems

Abstract

Concurrent engineering of system parts with diverging requirements can be extremely challenging. One example are mixed-criticality systems that integrate hard real-time software for safety–critical functionality and general purpose software providing a sophisticated user interface. The automotive industry, as well as other industrial branches, has a growing need to integrate consumer electronics applications (e.g. Linux based) and safety-relevant applications requiring an underlying hard real-time operating system. Some established concepts for mixed-criticality systems can be found in the avionics domain. This paper demonstrates that the principles behind these concepts are a dead end regarding innovations requiring a close interoperation. The second contribution of the paper is to present a different solution approach as a potential remedy that allows the different developer groups (hard real-time and standard IT) to retain their attitude to software development. The core of the novel approach is a worst-case execution time (WCET) directed OS service, which could serve as solution pattern for further problems in mixed-criticality systems.