Virtual Open Systems Newsletter

Enhancing mixed-critical product and service software solutions in distributed systems, HPC, automotive and energy

Research: H2020 EVEREST - Virtualized distributed computing

The dEsign enVironmEnt foR Extreme-Scale big data analytics on heterogeneous platforms (EVEREST) project started in 2020 with the objective of building an extreme-scale & distributed computing system on accelerated platforms. Virtual Open Systems contributes to this innovation project with virtualization solutions for hardware accelerators on Arm, RISC-V and x86 processors. In this context, recent performance benchmarks executed on the RISC-V SiFive Unleashed platform resulted in a first scientific paper ("VOSySmonitoRV: a mixed-criticality solution on Linux-capable RISC-V platforms") submitted for acceptance in an IEEE conference to be held in June 2021.

Product development: VOSySmonitorX86 video demonstration

A video demonstration, published on Virtual Open Systems website, showcases a proof of concept of an x86 mixed-critical virtualization solution based on VOSySmonitorX86. In this demo, Linux and FreeRTOS are co-executed in a secure way, demonstrating highly secure memory and processor isolation and freedom from interference. In detail, this is possible by leveraging on the System Management Mode (SMM), i.e. the highest privilege execution layer in x86 processors, that is able to secure the safety critical execution environment (FreeRTOS) from Linux. The video demo is available at the following Virtual Open Systems' webpage : a firmware based mixed criticality virtualization on x86.

Innovation: H2020 ENOCH - Automotive virtualization

In the context of the H2020 DIGIFED ENergica cOnneCtivity Hub (ENOCH) project, Virtual Open Systems completed the VOSySmonitor porting to the Raspberry Pi 4 board based on the Broadcom BCM2711 System on Chip (SoC). A proof of concept with Linux, FreeRTOS and VOSySVirtualNet has been deployed and tested. VOSySVirtualNet is the VOSySmonitor high performance virtual networking mechanism extension, used to enable secure communication between the two operating systems. The objective of this port is to provide electronic Tier-1 automotive customers with a low cost development environment to enable heterogeneous applications into a mixed-critical execution environment.

Product development: VOSySmonitor iMX8 port for autonomous driving

The Arm based version of the VOSySmonitor product IP has been selected by the customer to be used in the context of an L3 autonomous driving project, deployed on the NXP iMX8 platform. For this purpose, VOSySmonitor has been extended with the support for the platform GICv3 and for the iMX System Control Unit (SCU) APIs. Moreover, the virtual networking mechanism extension VOSySVirtualNet has been ported and tested on this platform. As a result, it's possible to execute under certifiable conditions both Linux and a real time operating system on the Cortex-A processors, with high performance communication enabled between the safety critical and the non safety critical operating system.

Development services: Activity in automotive and energy markets

Virtual Open Systems offers high quality design and development services to customers from Europe, Japan, Asia and north America. Customers benefit from Virtual Open Systems rare-to-find skills and knowledge in the fields of virtualization, lower layers programming, embedded systems, heterogeneous devices and certification to develop, design or evaluate their innovative solutions. Among some of the recent projects commissioned (at the time of this writing), there are: related to automotive (Flutter engine port, mixed-critical communication solution design, VOSySmonitor port on new hardware platforms), and to industrial energy markets (design of a multi SoC hardware abstraction solution based on VOSySmonitor).

Product development: VOSySmonitoRV demo and scientific dissemination

Virtual Open Systems enables mixed-criticality virtualization on RISC-V architecture through VOSySmonitoRV product development. VOSySmonitoRV does not require any specific CPU virtualization extensions, and for this reason it can be deployed on the market available platforms. The development results are disseminated: firstly, a set of measurements have been performed and resulted in a scientific paper titled "VOSySmonitoRV: a mixed-criticality solution on Linux-capable RISC-V platforms" that has been submitted for publication; secondly, a video demonstration showing the isolation and consolidation capabilities of VOSySmonitoRV has been published on company website as a mixed criticality virtualization solution for RISC-V.

Customer support: Continuous services commitment

Virtual Open Systems has proven continuous commitment to provide first in class, rare-to-find, design and development services to its customers in the field of lowest system software layers. The company’s internal management and development processes allow for delivering highly efficient services, meeting the customers’ expectations. In particular, the company continued its involvement in customer projects where virtualization is exploited in embedded uses cases to lower the total cost of production and ownership (TCP, TCO). The involved projects apply to different fields including rugged routers, automotive, industrial, energy and HPC. In addition to its proven know-how on mixed-critical virtualization, Virtual Open Systems also supports a variety of customer projects including for instance the implementation of POSIX-compliant software stacks that allow a flawless port of large existing software components to embedded platforms.

Further information and Contact