A spatial and temporal partitioning approach for dependable automotive systems

Automotive industrials aim to reduce quantity of execution control units (ECU) in order to control vehicle cost and energy consumption. Following this trend, next-generation of automotive body/engine controllers will integrate more real-time functions on a same ECU with different safety levels and application domains. To reach this new challenge, safety must therefore be improved to ensure no interference among functions. This paper deals with PharOS, a technology for the design and the implementation of embedded real-time systems in highly-constrained environments. It provides a safety-oriented kernel including earliest error detection and confinement techniques. This is realized through partitioning mechanisms allowing to keep stable and available the system even in degraded mode and to realize specific failure management policy.