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Key Insights from the Lund Workshop

By Blog, Workshop

Written by Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, and Philipp Ahmann, Senior OSS Community Manager at ETAS and Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee

Overview

In Lund, Sweden, Volvo recently hosted the ELISA workshop, aligning with their strong commitment to improving safety. The event was a perfect match for the ELISA community, attracting a full capacity of 30 in-person attendees and engaging over 15 virtual participants. The workshop not only provided valuable discussions and brainstorming sessions but also offered attendees a taste of Swedish hospitality with delightful breaks and lunches – facilitating a lively “hallway track”. The lively conversations sometimes made it challenging to stick to the schedule, but the energetic atmosphere fostered productive exchanges of ideas.

Insightful sessions extract

Presentation: Constant Flow of Increasing Challenges for a Safety Manager

With Håkan Sivenkrona we had an inspiring presentation from our hosting company Volvo, which also will lead into a follow up seminar dedicated to Safety Elements out of Context (SEooC). In today’s dynamic environment, standards are constantly evolving. It is crucial for both proprietary and open systems to adapt to this shifting landscape and embrace continuous safety compliance. As a community, we must come together to explore ways to consistently deliver a Safety Case in the future. Safety systems need to be ready for the usage of open source developed software and open source software need to be enabled to fulfill the demands of various directives, security and safety standards. Public expectations and established best practices will further drive safety innovation.

Link to slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zl2cC7HgJl4A3uGvbukFVdg-wsdn6kh4 

Presentation: SPDX safety profile and implications on code and traceability

During this session, we discussed the important factors that need to be considered and integrated into the Safety Cases moving forward. We also explored the efforts of the System Package Data Exchange project in capturing metadata to enhance this process. In addition to the Linux kernel and user space software, it is crucial to understand the origin of datasets, model training, and services for effective safety analysis in the future. By automating the generation of this information, we can ensure better traceability of requirements when there are changes in the inputs to the Safety Cases.

Link to slides: SPDX safety profile update.pdf

Presentation: safety mechanisms to be considered to meet ASIL levels in Automotive

Naresh Ravuri from Magna, provided an excellent overview of the work that they’ve been doing to tackle the top level safety goals from OEM perspective. They emphasized the importance of identifying a critical path even when all requirements are derived. The decomposition of the use case plays a crucial role in ensuring that if one part fails to perform a task, another part can take over. It is essential to have a deep understanding of the Linux system to avoid incorrect system decomposition. Additionally, considering the data-driven path is vital for conducting a thorough analysis. Lastly, it is important not to overlook the impact of the build (compiler) and runtime environments (libraries) on the overall system.

Link to slides: Safety mechanisms to be considered to meet ASIL levels in Automotive.pdf

Presentation: ELISA in the world of Software Defined Vehicles

Almost the whole Automotive Industry is currently looking into software defined vehicles with high performance computers (HPCs). During the ELISA workshop the participants discussed this from a practical point of view and what it means to “let it crash”. Coming from Cloud Native it was presented how to plan for potential system failures and how to recover from that. The architectural assumptions are important and how a system is tailored and methods for splitting critical resources from less critical system parts. The presentation was brought to the community by EMQ who are serving multiple automotive customers with MQTT solutions. 

Link to slides: SDV – “let it crash” in connected vehicles.pdf

Discussion: core parts of the kernel – initial focus on the “TINY” configuration

During the workshop, the approach of starting with the “TINY” config and gradually adding or removing components was discussed.  By clearly defining the core set of the linux kernel, it becomes easier to prioritize important aspects which are crucial for the safety argumentation of the kernel. While initially it was considered to avoid hardware and architecture specific code, this may not be feasible. By extending the “TINY” configuration with other components, not only does it enhance the system, but it also demonstrates a methodology for improving the overall functionality of the kernel. 

The follow up of the initial discussion on “TINY” will be split across various working groups inside ELISA. The Linux Features working group is already exploring suitable reference hardware like an ARM 64 bit QEMU. The Architecture Working Group will start the analysis based on their input. The build and booting of the reference hardware integrated into a CI is subject to the Systems WG.

Discussion: state of available tooling

The tooling for analyzing the Linux kernel is constantly improving. While there are already several tools integrated into the kernel, we are also exploring the inclusion of additional analysis tools that have shown their usefulness. If you’re interested in understanding call graphs, you can check out the ks-nav tool work available at: https://github.com/elisa-tech/ks-nav

Why ks-nav is important can be extracted also from the slides and get some workshop feeling by clicking on the embedded YouTube links: State of ks-nav.pdf

Summary of workshop and main takeaways

The good mixture of participants continue to bring new ideas into the discussion when meeting in person. In particular the pointing to use of the TINY Linux configuration for the core was brought in by a first time Linaro representative. It is always important to widen the spectrum.

While there is still a long way to go until we have proven processes for enabling Linux in Safety Applications, there are starting to emerge some excellent ideas and as we refine them, we should be able to formalize them. It’s very easy for folks to make destructive statements, but we’re seeing that the open dialog can be turned into a more positive outlook, as illustrated by the engineering approach for safe systems with linux, where discussion landed on defining a design element and building up from there.

It is important to remember that a closed source OS may be as vulnerable as Linux in working with an open source ecosystem. However in Linux we have an open system and can actually see how it operates. Maybe in other closed OS and in company development the same issues show up, but nobody knows about it, as there is no expert and possibility to analyze.

The automotive industry is increasingly interested in utilizing Linux for high-performance computers in vehicles. The complexity of the software-defined vehicle, centralized compute units, and complex system architectures pose challenges for traditional product development using closed-source proprietary real-time operating systems (RTOS). Linux, on the other hand, is capable of meeting these demands, which is why its adoption in the automotive industry is expected to continue to grow, but they still need the path of safety argumentation and certification. 

Interesting enough even with slightly different motivation also Aerospace observes wider usage of high performance computers and at same time a wider usage of Linux demanding safety certification. Maybe the next workshop will be hosted in the wider (aero-)space ecosystem to serve the other vertical branch in ELISA more. So, stay tuned for when and where our next Workshop will be. 

Still, a lot of work is needed to have a safety argumentation for Linux, but we are making progress.

Thanks to hosts

We would like to express our gratitude to Volvo Cars, especially Robert F, for organizing the venue and hosting us. We also appreciate the walking tour of Lund, the delicious meals, and the fascinating tour of MAX IV (https://www.maxiv.lu.se/). During the tour, the MAX IV team showcased their research using beamlines and accelerators. We learned that Linux is widely used as the IT infrastructure throughout the research site, although it is not considered safety-critical. These examples further demonstrate the trust and widespread adoption of Linux.

As hallway and networking is important when meeting face to face, Volvo arranged a great dinner for the participants where a lot of topics from MAX IV, as well as “the digital safety belt” and the directions of the ISO26262 were discussed and which role Linux plays in all of this. Like Volvo has released their patent on the safety belt for the sake of saving people’s life over making money with a patent many years back, let us hope that the same will happen to software in vehicles and make open source software like Linux the next “digital safety belt”. 

Contribute

If any of these topic areas is of interest to you,  please feel free to sign up for the mailing lists at https://lists.elisa.tech; show up at one of the working group meetings; and contribute to the discussion.

Join us at the Linux Plumbers for the “Safe Systems with Linux” micro conference – if you have a topic to propose for discussion, the CFP is open until July 10th; sign up to attend at: https://lpc.events/event/18/page/226-attend.

Improved system stressing with stress-ng

By Blog, Seminar Series

Stress-ng has a proven track record for stress testing Linux systems and forcing out system bugs. As past of the ELISA Seminar series, Colin King, Principal Engineer at Intel, gave a presentation titled, “Improved System Stressing with stress-ng.” His talk describes new stress-ng features and the future roadmap for stress-ng.

The ELISA Seminar Series focuses on hot topics related to ELISA’s mission to define and maintain a common set of elements, processes and tools that can be incorporated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems amenable to safety certification. Speakers are members, contributors and thought leaders from the ELISA Project and surrounding communities. Each seminar comprises a 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute Q&A, and it’s free to attend. You can watch all videos on the ELISA Project Youtube Channel ELISA Seminar Series Playlist here.

For more ELISA Project updates, subscribe to @ProjectElisa or our LinkedIn page or our Youtube Channel.

Critical Software Summit 2024

By Blog, Linux Foundation, News

The Open Source Summit Europe, which takes place on September 16-18 in Vienna, Austria, is packed with technical content. It is the premier event for open source developers, technologists, and community leaders to collaborate, share information, solve problems, and gain knowledge, furthering open source innovation and ensuring a sustainable open source ecosystem.

As a conference umbrella, Open Source Summit is composed of a collection of events covering the most important technologies, topics, and issues affecting open source today. The Critical Software Summit is one of those microconferences.

As open source is found more and more in safety-critical products and infrastructure, the need to ensure dependability and reliability has increased. This event gathers developers focused on solving these issues, to figure out how we can increase the confidence of using OS projects in safety, mission, and business-critical applications.

Several of ambassadors, contributors and leaders from the ELISA Project will be giving presentations on Monday, including:

Creating and maintaining a safety critical project comes with a lot of challenges. A central issue is keeping your documentation, starting from planning and guideline documents, down to requirements, safety analysis, reviews and tests, consistent and up to date. These artefacts often have their own lifecycle and are natively managed in different tools, with usually great traceability capabilities regarding dependencies between these artefacts as long as you stay within one tool or within a (usually propriety) tool family of one single tool vendor. Currently the resulting traceability gaps between these tools are handled either by the popular engineering tools like MS Excel or methods like “search for identical names”, depending highly on manual maintenance.

Using SPDX relationships, the upcoming Safety Profile in SPDX 3.1 will provide a model to represent all these dependencies as a knowledge model that can be used both to analyse possible impacts after a change (be it because of a security update or functional variants of your product), provide evidence of completeness and compliance as a Safety SBOM or simply keep track of your product variants.

In Safety Critical applications it is mandatory to ensure Sw Requirements traceability to Sw Specifications, Test Cases, Test Results, Bugs and more.
The process leading to this goal is usually complex and time-consuming and it is essential to understand the state step by step and highlight what remains to be done.
Moreover, for the intrinsic nature of a software project, we need to ensure traceability and test verification following any evolution in the ecosystem of the project.

BASIL The FuSa Spice, is an open source sw that provides a quality management solution aimed to address the above mentioned challenges for SW developments that are code driven and equally for the ones requirements driven.

We will see how to implement in BASIL Sw Requirements traceability to the source Code and to existing upstream Test Cases, how to execute them, how to navigate Test Results and artifacts and how to link failures to a bug in a bug tracking system.

We will also go into the details of a pipeline implementation based on the BASIL HTTP Api to understand how changes in one or more work items can be managed through automation with the goal of implementing a continuous certification framework.

In order to make functional safety claims on SW components, having a clear understanding of the underlying software architecture is crucial. However, if SW architectural documentation is missing, understanding how software operates and how its parts fit together can be challenging. For the Linux kernel and many other OSS SW, such documents are absent and instead, analysts must rely on code, which can be hard to read.
ks-nav is a tool designed to help in reverse engineering and understanding the code by generating diagrams that highlight the interactions between code elements and sub-elements.

ks-nav relies on binary images instead of source code analysis to get rid of the uncertainty introduced by configurations, compiler optimizations, and any other toolchain related issues. Additionally, using the MAINTAINERS file, it precisely pinpoints subsystems, enabling users to delve into their interactions with clarity.

This session focuses on:
* Why understanding the code is critical in FuSa activities;
* How ks-nav works, how it addresses the various challenges of analyzing the code;
* An example of how ks-nav can be used to support an expert-driven FMEA for a specific use case.

The increasing computation power of embedded CPUs has revolutionized industries such as Automotive, Aerospace, or Industrial by enabling centralized and enhanced use cases, software-defined functionalities, and increased automation. The challenges of this increased complexity are often addressed by incorporating Open Source Software, particularly Linux, virtualization and RTOS. As these industries are heavily regulated by quality and safety-integrity standards, the certification of these highly complex systems becomes crucial.

Starting from the similarities and overlaps in system architecture design across use cases, this talk will explore the demands imposed by safety integrity standards in various industries. To develop these systems and adhere to required processes, the integration of tools and a high degree of automation is essential.

The authors show how Open Source projects bridge the gap between open source and safety-criticality, introducing tools and processes, and showcasing collaborative efforts in creating reproducible example system architectures. These systems can serve as a foundation for companies and projects adopting Open Source in safety-critical applications.

The full schedule for the Critical Software Summit Schedule can be viewed here. Register here to attend in-person. Virtual registration is not required to access the event live stream. All conference sessions will be live-streamed to the Linux Foundation YouTube channel with freely available access during the event. Live stream links for each session can be accessed from each session listing in the schedule. More information is coming soon.

Stay tuned by subscribing to the ELISA Project newsletter or connect with us on TwitterLinkedIn or mailing lists to talk with community and TSC members.

Aligning Automotive Standards with Open Source Excellence

By Blog, Safety-Critical Software Summit

Dylan Dawson, Head of Partner Management at Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, gave a presentation about “Aligning Automotive Standards with Open Source Excellence,” at The Safety-Critical Software Summit, which took place on April 16-18 in Seattle, Washington. 

Free and open-source software (FOSS), particularly Linux, is gaining traction in automotive embedded solutions and High-Performance Computing Platforms due to its advantages over proprietary alternatives. However, assuming liability for FOSS-based issues presents challenges in software quality assurance and risk control. The automotive industry, relying on the ASPICE maturity model and safety standards for assessment, faces a mismatch with the decentralized nature of FOSS development, driven by community contributions. FOSS’s decentralized quality assurance measures make single-entity regulation impractical, compounded by the extensive Linux code base, rendering low-level ASPICE Process Reference Model processes economically infeasible.

This presentation proposes a tailored approach incorporating ASPICE with compensation measures for FOSS specifics. This aims to achieve quality assurance and risk mitigation goals, enabling assessment through the ASPICE Process Assessment Model and adherence to functional safety standards. The video details these strategies, emphasizing a nuanced approach harmonizing FOSS principles with industry standards for reliability and safety in automotive computing. Watch here: 

 

The Safety-Critical Software Summit took place under the Embedded Open Source Summit, where more than 860 individuals attended in-person at the event with 79% holding technical positions. To see all of the videos from Summit, visit the ELISA Youtube Channel and click on the Safety-Critical Software Summit Playlist

Learn more about the ELISA Project by:

Making Linux Fly: Towards Certified Linux Kernel

By Blog, Seminar Series

Although the Linux operating system has been used widely in many industries, adoption in aerospace has been slow due to the rigorous assurance evidence required as part of flight certification. The guidance for commercial flight software in most of the world is RTCA DO-178C, which identifies five progressively more rigorous levels of assurance. Providing the software life cycle data outlined by DO-178C is a daunting task for software as large and complex as Linux. In this project we focus on three objectives from DO-178C related to code coverage — the fraction of the source code that is exercised by testing. The three types of code coverage in DO-178C are statement coverage, decision coverage, and Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC). The last of these, MC/DC, is only required for Software Level A, the highest level of assurance.

For operating system kernels like Linux, measuring code coverage is challenging because of the unique execution environment compared to user space. Measuring MC/DC is even harder given the intricacy of the metric and limitations of tools. We share our experience in measuring Linux kernel’s code coverage, with an emphasis on MC/DC. We describe how we have enabled measuring Linux kernel’s MC/DC for the first time, by enhancing both the toolchain and the kernel itself. We also discuss the generalizability of our approach across different kernel versions and opportunities for improving coverage with kernel testing suites like KUnit and kselftest.

As part of the ELISA Seminar series, Wentao Zhang, PhD student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Steven H. VanderLeest, Technical Fellow at The Boeing Company; gave a presentation titled, “Making Linux Fly: Towards Certified Linux Kernel.”

The ELISA Seminar Series focuses on hot topics related to ELISA’s mission to define and maintain a common set of elements, processes and tools that can be incorporated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems amenable to safety certification. Speakers are members, contributors and thought leaders from the ELISA Project and surrounding communities. Each seminar comprises a 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute Q&A, and it’s free to attend. You can watch all videos on the ELISA Project Youtube Channel ELISA Seminar Series Playlist here.

For more ELISA Project updates, subscribe to @ProjectElisa or our LinkedIn page or our Youtube Channel.

Ferrocene: Qualifying the Rust compiler out in the open

By Blog, Seminar Series

Ferrocene is a fully open source toolchain to enable the use of the Rust programming language in safety-critical environments. It is a proper downstream of the main Rust compiler – rustc. This includes all documentation.

The mission of Ferrocene is to bring open source practices to safety-critical industries and improve the Rust open source ecosystem through safety-critical practices.

Ferrocene is also fully qualified using only open source tooling.

But what does that mean in practice? In this talk, I’ll walk you through our findings when qualifying the Ferrocene compiler toolchain using fully open source tools. A particular eye will be on the conditions that enabled the Ferrocene project to build a feedback loop with the Rust project and how they may inform your approach towards other FOSS projects.

As part of the ELISA Seminar series, Florian Gilcher, Managing Director at Ferrous Systems, gave a presentation titled, “Ferrocene: Qualifying the Rust compiler out in the open.”

The ELISA Seminar Series focuses on hot topics related to ELISA’s mission to define and maintain a common set of elements, processes and tools that can be incorporated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems amenable to safety certification. Speakers are members, contributors and thought leaders from the ELISA Project and surrounding communities. Each seminar comprises a 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute Q&A, and it’s free to attend. You can watch all videos on the ELISA Project Youtube Channel ELISA Seminar Series Playlist here.

For more ELISA Project updates, subscribe to @ProjectElisa or our LinkedIn page or our Youtube Channel.

ELISA Project at embedded world

By Blog, Industry Conference

The world of embedded systems is multifaceted – from hardware and software to services and tools. The embedded world Exhibition & Conference brings the entire embedded community together once a year in Nuremberg and provides a unique overview of the state-of-the-art in this versatile industry.  Last year, the conference hosted 952 exhibitors and 26,630+ visitors from all over the world. This years event, scheduled for April 9-11, is expected to be even larger.

Enabling Linux in Safety Applications (ELISA) Project will be at the event in the Collabora booth (Hall 4- booth 404) with a system demonstrator.

The ELISA System Demonstrator:

  • Heterogenous example system, fully based on Open Source, consisting of Linux, Zephyr (RTOS), and Xen (Virtualization) 
  • Represents recent SW architectures found in industries like Automotive Software Defined Vehicles and Aerospace 
  • Focus on reproducibility as blueprint for future systems 
  • Running on Xilinx Ultrascale ZCU102 and on qemu 
  • GitHub documentation & Gitlab CI 
  • Various use cases documented like device pass through of SD card and NIC, para virtualization of network and different Linux guests  

Working Group Spotlight: Automotive

By Blog, Working Group

To kickoff 2024, ELISA hosted an annual Working Group Update where all of the leads share a quick overview, milestones achieved and plans for the new year. The update meetings, which was hosted online for a few hours over two days, was open to the public. If you missed the meeting, the videos can be found on-demand on a new Working Group playlist on the ELISA Youtube Channel.

Each week, we’ll feature a new Working Group video and details for how to get involved in meetings and join the discussions. Today, we shine a spotlight on the Automotive Working Group led by Philipp Ahmann, Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee and Technical Business Development Manager at Robert Bosch GmbH. Watch the video below or check out the PPT here.

Engage with the Automotive Working Group: 

Attend a meeting: 

Join the Mailing List:

Participate in GitHub:

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.

Learn more about the ELISA Project by:

Working Group Spotlight: Medical Devices

By Blog, Working Group

To kickoff 2024, ELISA hosted an annual Working Group Update where all of the leads shared a quick overview, milestones achieved and plans for the new year. The update meetings, which was hosted online for a few hours over two days, was open to the public. If you missed the meeting, the videos can be found on-demand on a new Working Group playlist on the ELISA Youtube Channel.

Each week, we’ll feature a new Working Group video and details for how to get involved in meetings and join the discussions. Today, we shine a spotlight on the Medial Devices Working Group, led Kate Stewart, Chair of the Medical Devices Working Group and Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, and Milan Lakhani, Vice-chair of the Medical Devices Working Group and Software Engineer at Codethink. Watch the video below or check out the PPT here.

 

 

Engage with the Medical Devices Working Group: 

Attend a meeting: 

Join the Mailing List:

Participate in GitHub:

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.

Learn more about the ELISA Project by:

Certifying Linux: State of the Art and Lessons Learned after Eight Years

By Blog, Seminar Series

In 2018, in the course of the SIL2LinuxMP project, we summarized the knowledge gained around research questions and suggested potential solutions using Linux in safety-related systems in the paper “Certifying Linux: Lessons Learned in Three Years of SIL2LinuxMP.” Since then, the activities using Linux in safety-related systems has continued to attract more experts and more commercial attention. However, it is still a challenging activity to pursue. In this video, we explain, reflect and comment the areas of work and activities that have been followed the next five years throughout the industry and how they relate, complement initial ideas that were collected in the SIL2LinuxMP project.

As part of the ELISA Seminar series, Lukas Bulwahn, Safety Software Key Expert at Elektrobit, gave a presentation titled, “Certifying Linux: State of the Art and Lessons Learned after 8 Years.

 

The ELISA Seminar Series focuses on hot topics related to ELISA’s mission to define and maintain a common set of elements, processes and tools that can be incorporated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems amenable to safety certification. Speakers are members, contributors and thought leaders from the ELISA Project and surrounding communities. Each seminar comprises a 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute Q&A, and it’s free to attend. You can watch all videos on the ELISA Project Youtube Channel ELISA Seminar Series Playlist here.

For more ELISA Project updates, subscribe to @ProjectElisa or our LinkedIn page or our Youtube Channel.