Last week, the Linux Foundation announced the full schedule for Open Source Summit North America, the premier event for open source code and community contributors. The leading gathering for the global open source community offers 200+ sessions presented through 16 microconferences, exploring the most crucial and innovative topics driving open source advancements today.
Embedded Open Source Summit is also being held April 16-18 in Seattle, Washington, alongside Open Source Summit North America. The Safety-Critical Software Summit, sponsored by the ELISA Project, will be under the EOSS umbrella and aims to gather safety experts and open source developers to enable and advance the use of open source in safety-critical applications.
Check out the complete schedule here. Register here by February 24 for an early bird discount. Those who register for Open Source Summit can add on registration for Embedded Open Source Summit for free.
SAN FRANCISCO – November 30, 2022 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project announced that Robert Bosch GmbH and XPENG Motors have joined the project, marking its commitment to Linux and its effective use in safety-critical applications in connected cars. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, ELISA is an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems.
Bosch is one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers. Bosch solutions combine automotive software know-how across all domains with expertise in electrical/electronic architecture of large integrated systems, complex real-time software, IoT, and automotive hardware. Their middleware offers functional safety, real-time behavior, and reliability under automotive requirements, combined with cyber-security. The Bosch experience and formal membership in ELISA fits well within the project goals and mission.
“Increasing product complexity and driving requirements in various areas of the software defined vehicle towards mixed-critical workloads requires thinking and going new ways to widen traditional approaches of systems engineering. Due to Bosch’s existing expertise in Linux and functional safety, the formal membership of Bosch within the ELISA project is a logical and consequent step,” said Philipp Ahmann, Business Development Manager – Embedded Open Source, Cross-Domain Computing Solutions at Robert Bosch GmbH. “The enthusiastic collaboration between functional safety experts combined with the recent excellent contributions from Linux experts are adding the value and momentum needed to enable Linux in safety applications and to make ELISA a success story.”
Earlier this month, Philipp Ahmann was nominated and elected as the new Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC). He has been involved in the ELISA Project since May 2019 as an ambassador and member of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) who has written blogs and given presentations in various Linux Foundation conferences and industry shows.
Philipp Ahmann steps into this role after TSC Chair Shuah Khan, Linux Fellow and Kernel Maintainer at The Linux Foundation, who has helped build the technical governance of the project and advance its mission and goals for more than two years. She will continue to contribute to the ELISA by helping Philipp Ahmann in his TSC role and supporting the working group leads.
“Philipp has made vast contributions during his time with the ELISA Project,” said Shuah Khan. “Since the day he joined the community, he’s been actively involved and has led the Automotive Working Group to real-world use cases like tell tales. His leadership will play an important role in setting up priorities and in providing guidance to the project. We are very excited about this next step in our evolution as an open source project setting the standard for safety-critical applications.”
Linux is used in all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes. Launched in February 2019, ELISA works with Linux kernel and safety communities to agree on what should be considered when Linux is used in safety-critical systems. The project has several dedicated working groups that focus on providing resources for system integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems.
ELISA is open to everyone. Anyone can develop and contribute code, get elected to the Technical Steering Committee, or help steer the project forward in any number of ways.
Developers who are elected to the Technical Steering Committee or who participate as project leaders will provide leadership regarding the technical direction.
XPENG Motors, a leading Chinese smart EV company with hubs in China, the United States, and Europe, was founded in 2014 with a belief that technology is bound to transform the future of mobility.
“We are a technology company at heart. By addressing the needs of our customers with our expertise, we can solve the complicated questions in unchartered territory,” said Yu Peng, Embedded Systems General Manager at XPENG Motors. “We recognize the crucial and diverse role mobility plays in people’s lives, and aspire to expand future mobility through intelligent revolution, from the road to the air.”
“We joined ELISA because we wanted to get more technology and experience in improving the functional safety and stability of Linux-based system software. Through communications and participation, we hope the ELISA Project helps us to make products safer and more reliable,” said Peng.
Other ELISA Project members include ADIT, AISIN AW CO., Arm, Automotive Grade Linux, Automotive Intelligence and Control of China, Banma, Boeing, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Lotus Cars, Toyota, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, NVIDIA, SUSE, Suzuki, Wind River, OTH Regensburg, Toyota and ZTE.
ELISA Presentations
The ELISA Project will be represented at Open Source Summit Japan, hosted on December 5-6 in Yokohama, Japan, and virtually. Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation, will give a keynote address titled “Japan’s Critical Infrastructure – Open Source Evolution,” on Tuesday, December 6 that will feature ELISA and a few other open source projects. On Wednesday, December 7, there will be an ELISA Mini-Summit that will offer a deep dive into the mission of the project and activities of the various working groups. There is a $10 fee when adding the ELISA Summit to the Open Source Summit Japan registration. Learn more about the conference or register here.
Other presentations this year include:
ELISA Summit – Hosted virtually on September 7-8, this event included speakers from Aptiv Services Deutschland GmbH, Boeing, CodeThink, The Linux Foundation, Mobileye, Red Hat and Robert Bosch GmbH. Watch the videos here.
Open Source Summit Europe – Hosted in-person in Dublin on September 13-16, ELISA had two dedicated presentations about enabling safety in safety-critical applications and safety and open source software. Watch the videos here.
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 3,000 members. The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, Hyperledger, RISC-V, PyTorch, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
SAN FRANCISCO – August 11, 2022 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project announced that Boeing has joined as a Premier member, marking its commitment to Linux and its effective use in safety critical applications. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, ELISA is an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems.
“Boeing is modernizing software to accelerate innovation and provide greater value to our customers,” said Jinnah Hosein, Vice President of Software Engineering at the Boeing Company. “The demand for safe and secure software requires rapid iteration, integration, and validation. Standardizing around open source products enhanced for safety-critical avionics applications is a key aspect of our adoption of state-of-the-art techniques and processes.”
As a leading global aerospace company, Boeing develops, manufactures and services commercial airplanes, defense products, and space systems for customers in more than 150 countries. It’s already using Linux in current avionics systems, including commercial systems certified to DO-178C Design Assurance Level D. Joining the ELISA Project will help pursue the vision for generational change in software development at Boeing. Additionally, Boeing will work with the ELISA Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to launch a new Aerospace Working Group that will work in parallel with the other working groups like automotive, medical devices, and others.
“We want to improve industry-standard tools related to certification and assurance artifacts in order to standardize improvements and contribute new features back to the open source community. We hope to leverage open source tooling (such as a cloud-based DevSecOps software factory) and industry standards to build world class software and provide an environment that attracts industry leaders to drive cultural change at Boeing,” said Hosein.
Linux is used in all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes. Launched in February 2019, ELISA works with Linux kernel and safety communities to agree on what should be considered when Linux is used in safety-critical systems. The project has several dedicated working groups that focus on providing resources for system integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems.
“Linux has a history of being a reliable and stable development platform that advances innovation for a wide range of industries,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation. “With Boeing’s membership, ELISA will start a new focus in the aerospace industry, which is already using Linux in selected applications. We look forward to working with Boeing and others in the aerospace sector, to build up best practices for working with Linux in this space.”
Other ELISA Project members include ADIT, AISIN AW CO., Arm, Automotive Grade Linux, Automotive Intelligence and Control of China, Banma, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Lotus Cars, Toyota, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, NVIDIA, SUSE, Suzuki, Wind River, OTH Regensburg, Toyota and ZTE.
ELISA Summit – Hosted virtually for participants around the world on September 7-8, this event will feature overview of the project, the mission and goals for each working group and an opportunity for attendees to ask questions and network with ELISA leaders. The schedule is now live and includes speakers from Aptiv Services Deutschland GmbH, Boeing, CodeThink, The Linux Foundation, Mobileye, Red Hat and Robert Bosch GmbH. Check out the schedule here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/elisa-summit/program/schedule/. Registration is free and open to the public. https://elisa.tech/event/elisa-summit-virtual/
ELISA Forum – Hosted in-person in Dublin, Ireland, on September 12, this event takes place the day before Open Source Summit Europe begins. It will feature an update on all of the working groups, an interactive System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) use case and an Ask Me Anything session. Pre-registration is required. To register for ELISA Forum, add it to your Open Source Summit Europe registration.
Open Source Summit Europe – Hosted in-person in Dublin and virtually on September 13-16, ELISA will have two dedicated presentations about enabling safety in safety-critical applications and safety and open source software. Learn more.
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 2,950 members. The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, Hyperledger, RISC-V, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Register for the ELISA Spring Workshop on April 5-7 to Learn More
SAN FRANCISCO – March 23, 2022 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project, an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems, announced a stronger ecosystem focused on automotive use cases with the addition of the Automotive Intelligence and Control of China (AICC), LOTUS Cars and ZTE.
“The ELISA ecosystem continues to grow globally with strong support from automakers across Asia and Europe,” Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation. “By leveraging the expertise of current and new ELISA Project members, we are defining the best practices for use of Linux in the automobiles of the future. “
Linux is used in all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes. Launched in February 2019 by the Linux Foundation, ELISA works with Linux kernel and safety communities to agree on what should be considered when Linux is to be used in safety-critical systems. The project has several dedicated working groups that focus on providing resources for System integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems.
The Automotive Working Group discusses the conditions and prerequisites the automotive sector needs to integrate Linux into a safety critical system. The group, which includes collaboration from ADIT, Arm, Codethink, Evidence (a part of Huawei), Red Hat and Toyota, focuses on actual use cases from the Automotive domain to derive the technical requirements to the kernel as a basis for investigation within the Architecture Workgroup and to serve as a blueprint for actual projects in the future. There is also close collaboration with Automotive Grade Linux, which results in a meta-ELISA layer enhancing the instrument cluster demo for safety relevant parts. As leaders in the automotive industry, AICC, LOTUS Cars and ZTE will most likely join the Automotive Working Group.
New Global Automotive Expertise
As the industry’s leading ICV computing infrastructure company, AICC is committed to providing OEMs with intelligent vehicle computing platforms and digital bases for empowering them the differentiated application development ability. In November 2021, AICC released iVBB2.0 series products, which takes ICVOS as the core product, then develops ICVHW, ICVSEC, ICVEC, and other product units. Currently, iVBB2.0 has been delivered to many OEMs and achieved collaboration on cross-platform development, co-built SDV, multi-chip distributed deployment, data security policy deployment and car cloud collaborative computing.
“Becoming a member of the ELISA Project, is in line with the high real-time, high-security, and high-reliability commitment that AICC has always made,” said Dr. Jin Shang, CEO & CTO of AICC. “This will provide a guarantee for the mass production development of AICC’s ICV computing infrastructure platform from security and quality perspectives. Based on the elements, tools, and processes shared by ELISA, AICC will build safety-critical applications and systems relating to Linux requirements, leading to widely used and internationally influential products.”
LOTUS Cars, which was honored as “Manufacturer of the Year” at the News UK Motor Awards in 2021, is focused on the safety of intelligent driving. It is a world-famous manufacturer of sports cars and racing cars noted for their light weight and fine handling characteristics.
“Functional safety is critical to intelligent driving,” said Jie Deng, LOTUS Cars In-Vehicle Operating System Lead. “LOTUS focuses on ‘track-level intelligent drive‘ and is committed to ensuring that drivers stay away from risks through active redundancy of software and hardware. We are very excited to join the ELISA Project and work with industry experts to productize Linux-based safety-critical systems for more drivers to experience intelligent driving in a highly safe and fun way.”
ZTE Corporation is a global leader in telecommunications and information technology. Founded in 1985, the company has been committed to providing innovative technologies and integrated solutions for operators, government and consumers from over 160 countries. ZTE has established 11 state-of-the-art global R&D centers and 5 intelligent manufacturing bases.
Relying on key technologies and core capabilities in the communications field, ZTE Automotive Electronics is committed to becoming a digital vehicle infrastructure capability provider and an independent high-performance partner in China, facilitating the intelligent and networked development in the automobile field. ZTE has been dedicated to GoldenOS R&D for more than 20 years. On this basis, ZTE proposes the integrated automotive operating system solution of high-performance embedded Linux and high security microkernel OS/Hypervisor, covering all scenarios of intelligent vehicle control, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and intelligent network connectivities.
These new members join ADIT, AISIN AW CO., Arm, Automotive Grade Linux, Banma, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Toyota, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, NVIDIA, SUSE, Suzuki, Wind River, OTH Regensburg and Toyota.
The Spring Workshop
ELISA Project members will come together for its quarterly Spring Workshop on April 5-7 to learn about the latest developments, working group updates, share best practices and collaborate to drive rapid innovation across the industry. Hosted online, this workshop is free and open to the public. Details and registration information can be found here.
Workshop highlights include:
A keynote by Robert Martin, Senior Principal Engineer at MITRE Corporation, about “Software Supply Chain Integrity Transparency & Trustworthiness and Related Community Efforts.” The presentation will discuss the capabilities emerging across industry and government to assess and address the challenges to providing trustworthy software supplies with assurance of integrity and transparency to their composition, source, and veracity – the building blocks of software supply chains we can gain justifiable confidence in at scale and speed.
A session by Christopher Temple, Lead Safety & Reliability Systems Architect at Arm Germany GmbH, and Paul Albertella, Consultant at Codethink, about “Mixed-Criticality Processing on Linux.” This talk will help create a common understanding of mixed-criticality processing on Linux and the related problems, collect and discuss alternatives for addressing the problems.
A discussion led by Philipp Ahmann, Business Development Manager at Robert Bosch GmbH, about a new Industrial IoT (IIoT) Working Group within ELISA. The open forum will allow the community to discuss framing lightweight SOUP safety standards, but focusing on those touch points which are not fully covered by other use case driven working groups.
Speakers include thought leaders from ADIT GmbH, Arm, Bosch GmbH, Bytedance, Codethink, Huawei, Mobileye, The Linux Foundation, MITRE Corporation and Red Hat. Check out the schedule and register to attend the workshop today.
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
ELISA Ambassadors are technical leaders who are passionate about the mission of the ELISA Project, recognized for their expertise in functional safety and linux kernel development, and willing to help others to learn about the community and how to contribute.
Today, we announce two new ambassadors – Jeffrey Osier-Mixon, Principal Community Architect at Red Hat, and John MacGregor, a thought leader with several decades of experience in software technology. Learn more about Jeffrey and John below.
Jeffrey “Jefro” Osier-Mixon:
Jefro currently focuses on automotive efforts. As a community architect, Jefro is responsible for maintaining Red Hat’s relationship with automotive-oriented communities, and he acts as the current chair for the CentOS Automotive Special Interest Group.Jefro has worked in open source for nearly three decades, having started his career as a technical writer with Cygnus Support working on documentation for the GNU tools. He has worked with Wind River and Montavista/Cavium Networks on embedded operating systems, and spent five years at Transmeta. He switched careers in 2011 and went to Intel to serve as the community and program manager for the Yocto Project, where he was the board chair for 7 years. During that time, he also helped launch Zephyr and Project ACRN. Most recently, he spent two years at the Linux Foundation as a program manager for RISC-V International and LF Energy.Jefro has been on the program committee for the Embedded Linux Conference series since 2010, and he speaks regularly at open source conferences. It’s best to catch him after the coffee kicks in.
John MacGregor:
John is currently spicing up his retirement by participating in various ELISA working groups. He started his long career as a scientific programmer, switched to Unix programmer and system architect, then progressed to project manager in telecommunications. He worked for several decades as Senior Expert for Software Technology in the Corporate Research Division of Robert Bosch GmbH. Among other things, he worked on software process improvement, software reuse, automotive software architecture and IoT technologies. Before retiring, John participated in the SIL2LinuxMP project, which focused on certifying Linux under IEC 61508 at the SIL2 level, and then continued to contribute to the ELISA project.
John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, specializing in operations research and information systems, as well as an MBA, specializing in marketing and finance.
Learn more about other ELISA Ambassadors here: https://elisa.tech/community/ambassadors/ Or, if you’re currently participating in the project and would like to become an ambassador, you can apply here.
Schedule for the ELISA Fall Workshop on November 8-10 is now live
SAN FRANCISCO – October 20, 2021 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project, an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems, announced that Red Hat has upgraded its membership to premier member and welcomes Banma, Lotus Cars and SUSE as the newest members.
Linux is used in all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes. Launched in February 2019 by the Linux Foundation, ELISA works with Linux kernel and safety communities to agree on what should be considered when Linux is to be used in safety-critical systems.
“Linux underpins many applications today that have safety-critical and cybersecurity implications,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation. “By collaborating together, the ELISA members are defining the best practices for use of Linux in these systems. We look forward to continuing to build consensus and welcoming expertise and collaboration from these new members.”
Attend the Fall Workshop
Since its inception, ELISA has hosted quarterly workshops that bring together project members and community contributors to discuss working group updates, trends in functional safety, use cases and more. The next workshop will be held virtually on November 8-10 and is free to attend. Speakers include thought leaders from Arm, Codethink, Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Evidence Srl, Google, Intel, Mobileye, The Linux Foundation, Red Hat and UL LLC. Register and check out the schedule: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/elisa-workshop/.
Join the New Working Groups
Since launch, the project has worked to establish a governance model that creates processes and guidance to the focused working groups that aim to provide resources for System integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems. Today, ELISA announces two new working groups:
Open Source Engineering Process Working Group: This working group aims to examine safety-related claims that we might like to make about Linux as part of a system, and to explore how we can gather and present evidence to support such claims.
Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems Working Group: This working group will work to bring together kernel developers and producers of safety critical systems to demonstrate use of such features in real systems, and to learn from these experiences together as a community. Learn more about this new working group in this November Workshop session.
Learn more about the Global Ecosystem
Red Hat, which is known for its leadership in linux and open source, joined ELISA earlier this year and has been very active in the technical community. With their upgraded membership to Premier, Red Hat welcomes Gabriele Paoloni, Open Source Community Technical Leader at Red Hat, as the ELISA Project Governing Board Chair.
“Red Hat announced our intent to expand our expertise in Linux to safety-critical automotive use cases earlier this year as we work to develop a Linux in-vehicle operating system,” said Francis Chow, vice president, In-Vehicle Operating System, Red Hat. “As such, we’re pleased to extend our participation in ELISA as a Premier member and collaborate with other industry leaders in building up open source software for applications that require extremely high levels of trust and functional safety. We believe a standardized common set of tools and processes can drive innovation toward the software-defined vehicle. ”
Additionally, ELISA welcomes Banma, a Chinese startup specializing in automotive software; Lotus Cars, a leader in automotive manufacturing in China; and SUSE, a global leader in open source software specializing in enterprise Linux, Kubernetes management, and edge solutions. These new members join ADIT, AISIN AW CO., arm, Automotive Grade Linux, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Toyota, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, NVIDIA, Suzuki, Wind River, OTH Regensburg and Toyota.
“Compared with other open software, safety is the key differentiation of automotive OS”, said Sean Xiao, Chief Architect at Banma. “The mission of Banma is to help automotive makers deliver intelligent cars by offering advanced vehicle open software. The ELISA Project combines safety and linux, which offers flexibility and openness, and closely aligns with our goals.”
“For nearly 30 years, SUSE has been a trusted partner supporting systems and essential workloads in some of the most challenging and critical industries in terms of safety requirements, such as automotive and transportation, government, aerospace and defense, industrial and manufacturing, and healthcare,” said Ivo Totev, SUSE COO. “We already collaborate with current ELISA members on important initiatives and are pleased to join ELISA as a formal member to continue to provide innovation in safety-critical domains.”
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Since launching in 2019, the ELISA Project has continued to grow in membership, community contributions and working groups. The project’s more than 20 member companies, which include ADIT, AISIN AW CO., arm, Automotive Grade Linux, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Kuka, Linuxtronix, Mentor, NVIDIA, OTH Regensburg, Red Hat, Suzuki, Toyota and Wind River, collaborate to define and maintain a standardized set of processes and tools that can be integrated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems seeking safety certification.
Today, the ELISA Project is excited to announce that its next technical workshop will take place virtually on November 8-10. The event is free and open to developers, users and contributors of ELISA from around the globe looking to learn, network and collaborate.
The Call for Papers is now open and accepting submissions that will tackle technical strategies for development and deployment as well as real-world applications and use cases. Submit a speaking proposal by Friday, October 1 here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/elisa-workshop/program/cfp/.
The last workshop took place in May with 239 participants from 37 different countries. It featured sessions that showcased working group milestones, open discussions about projects and use cases in automotive and medical. Additionally, this workshop involved more collaboration with adjacent communities, such as Xen, Real Time Linux and AUTOSAR. For a complete recap of the workshop, click here.
The ELISA Workshops are hosted once a quarter and are focused on education and outreach for new community members, the exchange of ideas and feedback from the linux kernel and safety communities, as well as productive collaboration to make tangible progress toward achieving the mission and goals of the ELISA Project.
Registration for the event is also open. You can register here.
SAN FRANCISCO – April 19, 2020 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project, an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems, announced that Codethink, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, NVIDIA and Red Hat has joined its global ecosystem.
Linux is used in safety-critical applications with all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes which decreases the issues that could result in loss of human life, significant property damage, or environmental damage. Launched in February 2019 by the Linux Foundation, ELISA will work with certification authorities and standardization bodies across industries to document how Linux can be used in safety-critical systems.
“Open source software has become a significant part of the technology strategy to accelerate innovation for companies worldwide,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation. “We want to reduce the barriers to be able to use Linux in safety-critical applications and welcome the collaboration of new members to help build specific use cases for automotive, medical and industrial sectors.”
Milestones
After a little more than two years, ELISA has continued to see momentum in project and technical milestones. Examples include:
Successful Workshops: In February, ELISA hosted its 6th workshop with more than 120 registered participants. During the workshop, members and external speakers discussed cybersecurity expectations in the automotive world, code coverage of glibc and Intel’s Linux test robot. Learn more in this blog. The next workshop is scheduled for May 18-20 and is free to attend. Register here.
New Ambassador Program: In October 2020, ELISA launched a program with thought leaders with expertise in functional safety and Linux kernel development. These ambassadors are willing to speak at events, write articles and work directly with the community on mentorships or onboarding new contributors. Meet the ambassadors here.
Mentorship Opportunities: The Linux Foundation offers a Mentorship Program with projects that are designed to help developers with the necessary skills to contribute effectively to open source communities. A recent program, ELISA participated in the Fall 2020 session with Code coverage metrics for GLibC and a Linux Kernel mentorship focused on CodeChecker. This project supports ELISA’s goals to gain experience in using various status analysis methods and tools available in the Linux kernel. Learn more here.
Working Groups: Since launch, the project has created several working groups that collaborate and work towards providing resources for System integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems. Current groups include an Automotive Working Group, Medical Devices Working Group, Safety Architecture Working Group, Kernel Development Process Working Group and Tool Investigation and Code Improvement Sub-Working Group to focus on specific activities and goals. Learn more or join a working group here.
“The primary challenge is selecting Linux components and features that can be evaluated for safety and identifying gaps where more work is needed to evaluate safety sufficiently,” said Shuah Khan, Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee and Linux Fellow at the Linux Foundation. “We’ve taken on this challenge to make it easier for companies to build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications by exploring potential methods to enable engineers to answer that question for their specific system.”
Learn more about the goals and technical strategy in this white paper.
Growing Ecosystem
After a little more than two years, the ELISA Project has grown by 300%. With new members Codethink, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, NVIDIA and Red Hat, the project currently has 20 members that collaborate to define and maintain a standardized set of processes and tools that can be integrated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems seeking safety certification. These new members join BMW Car IT GmbH, Intel, Toyota, ADIT, AISIN AW CO., arm, Elektrobit, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, Suzuki, Wind River, Automotive Grade Linux and OTH Regensburg.
“Codethink has been working with ELISA for a few years and we are excited to continue our engagement as a member,” said Shaun Mooney, Division Manager at Codethink. “Open Source Software, particularly Linux, is being used more and more in safety applications and Codethink has been looking at how we can make software trustable for a long time. We’ve been working to understand how we can use complex software and guarantee it will function as we want it to. This problem needs to be tackled collectively and ELISA is a great place to collaborate with experts in both safety and software. We’ve been working with most of the working groups since the start of ELISA and will continue to be active participants, using our expert knowledge of Linux and Open Source to help advance the state of the art for safety.”
“Safety is the most important feature of a self-driving car,” said Huang Chang, co-founder and CTO of Horizon Robotics. “Horizon’s investment into functional safety is one of the most important ones we’ve ever made, and it provides a critical ingredient for automakers to bring self-driving cars to market. The creative safety construction the ELISA project is undertaking complements Horizon’s functional safety endeavor and continued commitment to certifying Linux-based safety-critical systems.”
“Huawei is one of the most important Linux kernel contributors and recently joined the automotive industry as strategic partner in Asia and Europe,” said Alessandro Biasci, Technical Expert at Huawei.“ We are pleased to further advance our mission and participate in ELISA, which will allow us to combine our experience in the Linux kernel development and knowledge in safety and security to bring Linux to safety-critical applications.”
“Edge computing extends enterprise software from the datacenter and cloud to a myriad of operational and embedded technology footprints that interact with the physical world, such as connected vehicles and manufacturing equipment,” said Chris Wright, Chief Technical Officer at Red Hat. “A common open source software platform across these locations simplifies and accelerates solution development, while supporting functional safety’s end goal of reducing the risk of physical injury. Red Hat recognizes the importance of establishing functional safety evidence and certifications for Linux, backed by a rich platform and vibrant ecosystem for safety-related applications. We are excited to bring our twenty-seven years of Linux expertise to the ELISA community’s work.”
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
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The announcement highlights new member support, community growth and engagement, and upcoming events to learn more about ELISA’s work in advancing open source in safety-critical systems.
Community members can learn more about ELISA during the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit North America where Kate Stewart, is set to give a keynote speech, “Keynote: Open Source in Safety Critical Applications: The End Game.” For the first time, this event will also include an Open Source Dependability track.
We had a successful and well-attended Open Source Software in Safety-Critical Systems Summit on October 31, 2019 in Lyon. Here is the list of sessions, abstracts, speakers, and their presentation slides (linked from the session titles).
Abstract: Safety certification is an essential requirement for software that will be used in highly regulated industries. The Xen Project, a stable and secure hypervisor that is used in many different markets, has been exploring the feasibility of building safety-certified products on Xen for the last year, looking at key aspects of its code base and development practices.
In this session, we will lay out the motivation and challenges of making safety certification achievable with open source and the Xen Project. We will outline the process the project has followed thus far and highlight lessons learned along the way. The talk will cover technical enablers, necessary process and tooling changes, and community challenges. Safety certification for commercial software based on an open-source hypervisor is an exciting and challenging goal.
Abstract: Open-source software development and how open-source projects are run is often seen as incompatible with functional safety requirements and established processes and standards. Open-source has been used on a regular basis in applications with safety requirements however in most cases the open-source software is forked and developed behind closed doors to comply with safety standards and processes and using existing infrastructure and tools not common or not available in public and in open-source.
This talk will show how the Zephyr project is moving to a new development model and methodology that uses existing and public tools to address many of the requirements and foundations that would help with using Zephyr in applications with functional safety requirements.
Abstract: Aymeric will depict the background and challenges of using Linux for safety critical embedded applications : cultural clash of OSS community vs. classical waterfall development, many difficult to access and understand standard specifications, custom and expensive developments, etc.
On this basis, Aymeric will introduce ELISA’s current status, direction and goals.
Abstract: There is quite a buzz at the moment about safety-certifying open-source software. The initial discussions have centered around which standards to use and which domains/industries/applications should be certified first. Some of the proposals were for extremely complex state-of-the-art domain applications which have, as yet, not even reached the stage of commercialization. A pretty common aspect of most of these discussions focus on the end state of the certification approaches and ignore the question of “how do we get there”. Borrowing from a tired old metaphor, sometimes it’s like we’re talking about climbing Mount Everest when we haven’t even learned to walk.
It’s not like we’re starting from scratch, however. There are time-honoured principles for going about certifying new products. Some open source projects have already learned some lessons from their certification efforts while other projects have some good insights about how they want to approach certifying their open source software. There are possibilities to cooperate and learn from each other.
This talk will present the basic issues facing a project that wants to start a safety-certification initiative and some of the options that they have. It focuses on incremental and evolutionary approaches that minimize the risk that the initiative will fail.
Abstract: AGL Instrument Cluster Expert Group want to create a base platform for Cluster. There are different system requirements between IVI and Cluster. Instead of a system based on the conventional IVI system, it is necessary to consider a new system suitable for Instrument Cluster.
Functional safety and Quality Management is one of the important issues. Instrument Cluster requires higher quality management than the IVI system.
We want to solve this issue by collaboration with the ELISA project. In this presentation we share to ELISA members “what we aim” and “our architecture”.
Abstract: The safety element out of context (SEooC) is popular amongst SW developers seeking to develop SW for safety critical systems. The ISO 26262 standard defines a SEooC as a “safety-related element which is not developed in the context of a specific item”. A safety-related SW element is a SW component or SW unit “that has the potential to contribute to the violation of or achievement of a top-level safety requirement”.
According to the Oxford dictionary “context” is “the circumstance that forms the setting for a statement in terms of which it can be fully understood”, and “out of context” as “not fully understandable”.
This presentation looks at the role of context, the implications of developing SW out of context and what this implies when SW is put into context later on by means of an example. It concludes by musing on whether something that is “not fully understandable” can be safe.
Abstract: Systems are becoming increasingly complicated, and current safety techniques which focus on failure rates of individual components are ineffective to handle such complexity. With systems like Linux, it is vital to have a proper tool to derive requirements from which we can build safe software. If the requirements are inadequate, then the software can pass every test while still having fatal flaws. STPA (Systems Theoretic Process Analysis) is a top down, systems approach to safety and security, which allows us to analyse complex systems, identify safety and security issues, and develop requirements.The first part of the talk will give an overview of why we need to incorporate safety and security at a system design level, explain the concepts of STPA, show how to manage complexity using an example of an Autonomous Vehicle and show real world examples of how to develop safety and security requirements.
Codethink have released an open-source tool for documenting STPA, which is hosted on flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.trustable.stpadocumentationtool The tool facilitates the storage of analysis data and automates the production of analysis documentation. It handles all of the analysis data in a tree structure, automatically managing reference numbers for all items, and data items can be linked and cross-referenced in the structure. Having the tool manage all cross referencing and numbering reduces a lot of effort. Everything is saved in plain text, which means the analysis data can be version-controlled easily. The second part of the talk will give a summary of why better tools are needed for STPA, and explain what the tool does with a live demo. The talk will conclude by pointing out improvements that can be made, next steps, and how the community can get involved in the open source project.
