Mixing Modern Multi-core Processors with Open Architectures

In recent years, the aerospace industry has sought to provide increased situational awareness for pilots and to improve operational efficiency of aircraft. This has resulted in new requirements for avionics display systems in the handling and display of more complex information.

At the same time, there has been a disruptive technology change with the adoption of multi-core processors, which can provide significant benefits in terms of size, weight, and power (SWaP) but can also present challenges for RTCA DO-178C/EUROCAE ED-12C avionics software and RTCA DO-254/EUROCAE ED-80 avionics hardware safety certification.

To make the challenge complete, the relationship between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators (Tier 1), and component providers (Tier 2) has changed drastically. OEMs are demanding more involvement in and control of the system design and more flexibility
and configurability of the solution — in short, a more modular and more open system design approach, as reflected in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) procurement directives.

This paper will discuss the development of a next-generation smart avionics platform, including:

• The use of an ARMv8 multi-core processor
• The use of hardware virtualization and a hypervisor for isolation and management of applications
• Runtime environments for safety-critical real-time applications
• The use of advanced Vulkan® SC-based GPU acceleration capabilities on modern graphics processing units (GPUs)
• The portability of software applications through use of ScioTeq’s MOSArt® and the ARINC 653 software architecture

This paper will also cover the technical challenges of adopting the state-of-the-art technologies
listed above, along with the results of the project, with a comparison to previous-generation
platforms. Finally, we will present the lessons learned from the project.