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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  

Putting Linux into Context – Towards a reproducible example system with Linux, Zephyr & Xen 

By Ambassadors, Blog, Industry Conference

Last week, developers from around the world traveled to Richmond, Virginia for the annual Linux Plumbers Conference. Hosted at the Omni Richmond Hotel on November 13-15, the event was mostly in-person with a live-streaming element for those who couldn’t make it.

Philipp Ahmann, Product Manager for Embedded Open Source at Robert Bosch GmbH and Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC), was at the event and gave presentation titled, “Putting Linux into Context – Towards a Reproducible Example System with Linux, Zephyr & Xen.” You can find his presentation video and PPT  below:

 

Demos on embedded systems using Linux are plentiful, but when it comes to reproducing them, things get complicated. Additionally, on decent embedded systems Linux is only one part of the system and interacts with real-time operating systems and virtualization solutions. This makes reproduction even harder.

Within the Linux Foundation’s ELISA project, we started to create a reproducible example system consisting of Linux, Xen, and Zephyr on real hardware. This is the next step after we achieved a reproducible system with a pure Linux qemu image.

The idea is to have documentation, a continuous integration including testing, which can be picked up by developers to derive and add their own software pieces. In this way they should be able to concentrate on their use case rather than spending effort in creating such a system (unless they explicitly want this). We also show how to build everything from scratch. The assumption is that only in this way it is possible to get a system understanding to replace elements towards their specific use cases.

We had challenges finding good hardware, tools, freely available GPU drivers and more and we are still not at the end. A good system SBOM is also creating additional challenges, although leveraging the Yocto build system has provided some advantages here.

While we are setting up the first hardware with documentation from source to build to deployment and testing on embedded hardware, we aim to have at least two sets of all major system elements like Linux flavor, a choice of virtualization technique, real-time OS and hardware. Only when software elements and hardware can be exchanged, we identify clear interfaces and make a system reproducible and adoptable.

Open Questions are:

  • What will be a good next hardware to extend this PoC scope?
  • Where do open source, security, safety, and compliance come best together?
  • Which alternative real-time operating systems and virtualization should be incorporated?

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

 

Register for the Safety-Critical Software Summit

By Blog, Industry Conference
embedded open source summit, Prague

The Safety-Critical Software Summit, which takes place on June 27-30, 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as virtually, as part of the new Embedded Open Source Summit conference is packed with technical content.

As open source is found more and more in safety-critical applications, the need to evaluate open source software that meets safety standards has increased. This event, sponsored by the ELISA Project, gathers safety experts and open source developers to enable and advance the use of open source in safety-critical applications. Check out some of the sessions and add them to your schedule: 

The full schedule for the Safety-Critical Software Summit Schedule can be viewed here.

Our thanks to:

Diamond Sponsors: Antmicro, Google, Intel and Meta

Platinum Sponsors: Core Embedded Linux Project

Gold Sponsors: ARM , BeagleBoard, Blues, Collabora, Igalia, NXP, Yocto Project

Silver Sponsors: Analog Devices, Civil Infrastructure Platform, emlix embedded linux systems, mind, Nordic Semiconductor, seeed studio.

Bronze Sponsors: AVSystem, Doulos, Golioth, HardwareIO, Memfault, Savoir – faire Linux, Sternum, wolfSSL

Partners: 

Special registration rates are available for small businesses, hobbyists, students and virtual attendees.

Members of The Linux Foundation receive a 20 percent discount off registration and can contact events@linuxfoundation.org to request a member discount code.

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

ELISA Project at Linaro Connect 2023

By Blog, Industry Conference

We’ve got a few more weeks to go before Linaro Connect, which takes place on April 26-28 at the Park Plaza London Riverbank in London. Once a year, engineers, developers, thought leader and software experts come together for technical sessions and hacking. Discussions focus on the future of open source software, solutions and best practices.

This year, ELISA Project is participating in the Linaro Connect 2023 event and will be presenting an update on the progress in Enabling Linux in Safety Applications (ELISA). The session, which is scheduled on Friday, April 28 from 11:20 – 11:35 am, will be presented by Philipp Ahmann, Product Manager Embedded Open Source at Bosch and Chair of the ELISA Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation and Chair of the ELISA Medical Devices Working Group. Both speakers have extensive experience and knowledge in the fields of embedded systems, open-source software and safety-critical applications.

During the session, attendees will get an overview of the goals and technical strategy of the ELISA project. The presentation will cover the different work groups involved in the project, such as Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems, Software Architecture, Open Source Engineering Process, Tool Investigation, and Code Improvement. The session will also explore how these work groups interact and contribute to the overall project.

The session will provide information on the methodologies and tools in use, existing challenges, and why the different puzzle pieces are all needed for enabling Linux in safety-critical applications. Attendees will leave the session with a better understanding of where the ELISA project stands today and what comes next. A discussion of how this work can complement other Linaro initiatives will be explored.

Learn more here.

Overall, the ELISA project’s attendance at Linaro Connect 2023 offers an intriguing chance to learn more about how the project is making Linux-based safety-critical applications possible as well as vertical use case working groups like Automotive, Medical, and Aerospace. These working groups are aimed at addressing specific challenges related to enabling Linux-based safety-critical applications in their respective domains.

If you’re attending Linaro Connect 2023, don’t miss the ELISA Project talk, especially if you’re interested in functional safety. The session will provide valuable insights into the project’s goals, strategies, challenges, and future plans.

To learn more or register for Linaro Connect, click on the main event website.

Join ELISA @ the Safety-Critical Software Summit in June

By Blog, Industry Conference

As open source is found more and more in safety-critical applications, the need to evaluate open source software that meets safety standards has increased. The Safety-Critical Software Summit, sponsored by the ELISA Project, will take place on June 27-30 in Prague, Czech Republic and virtually. The event gathers safety experts and open source developers to enable and advance the use of open source in safety-critical applications.

If you are new to the ELISA Project, here is what you need to know. ELISA members are defining and maintaining a common set of elements, processes and tools that can be incorporated into specific Linux-based, safety-critical systems amenable to safety certification. ELISA is also working with certification authorities and standardization bodies in multiple industries to establish how Linux can be used as a component in safety-critical systems. This is the first ever Safety-Critical Software event under the Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS).

Here is a glimpse to the Summit topics:

  • Open Source Software Interaction with Safety Standards
  • Best Practices to Work with Regulatory Authorities when using Open Source
  • Best Practices for Security Updates to Safety-critical Systems
  • Safety Engineering Applied to Open Source Projects
  • Quality Assessments based on Data from Development
  • Development of Technical Features with Safety Relevance
  • Safety Analysis Approaches and Methodology to Apply to Systems
  • Case Studies of Existing use of Linux in Safety-critical Domains

To attend, register for Embedded Open Source Summit. 1 registration gives you access to ALL events featured under the Embedded Open Source Summit umbrella. In-person and virtual registration are both available. Register here.

Together with the Embedded Open Source Summit, Safety-Critical Software Summit provides a foundation for collaboration between these embedded development communities.  The format will include presentations, BoFs, training, workshops and min-confs designed for real time problem solving and deep discussion.

To get an overview of the event, such as the important dates and the topics that will be covered, click here.

Stay tuned by subscribing to the ELISA Project newsletter or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn

ELISA at FOSDEM (Video)

By Ambassadors, Blog, Industry Conference

FOSDEM aka Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open source software development that is aimed at developers. FOSDEM is held annually, usually during the first weekend of February, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles Solbosch campus in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium.

Grand Place, Brussels

CNCF was an official sponsor and experts from various Linux Foundation projects came together to give keynotes and co-host devrooms including Embedded, Mobile & Automotive, Energy and SBOM.

In case you haven’t met the newly launched Linux Foundation Europe team, we invite you to read the latest blog “On the Road in February 2023.”

Philipp Ahmann, Chair of the ELISA Technical Steering Committee and Technical Business Development Manager at Robert Bosch GmbH, gave a presentation at FOSDEM titled, “The ELISA Project – Project insights and overview”. The lecture mainly focused on the goals and technical strategy of the project. It provided information about the different work groups, their interaction, and contributions. 

ELISA members are working together to define and maintain a common set of tools and processes that can help companies demonstrate that a specific Linux-based system meets the necessary safety requirements for certification. These existing working groups focus on Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems, Software Architecture, Open Source Engineering Process, Tool Investigation and Code Improvement. They are complemented by vertical use case working groups dealing with Automotive, Medical, and Aerospace.

During the talk, Philipp explained in detail about each working group. Safety Architecture group monitors the kernel for non safety related issues such as the watchdog kernel analysis and try to improve using tools and documentation and it is driven by use cases and demands of the products. 

Linux features for safety critical systems group mainly work on the safety criticality part and not the generic features. The main goal is to look for the elements which could improve safety by doing incremental steps to make the system more dependable and robust.

While doing these processes, code quality is very important and hence the tool investigation and code improvement group. The WG uses tools and CI servers to identify the kernel issues and to make the kernel more reliable and robust.

Open Source Engineering Process WG was developed due to the challenges in Engineering. There are rigorous methods within kernel development. There is a strong demand from traditional project management when it comes to safety products. We can see that not every process compliance agrees with it directly. We need to find an equivalent to the open source development  process compared to ISO 26262 requests for automotive products.

Systems work group works cross functional and cross projects and combine these elements involved in the above mentioned processes.

In order to tailor the systems accurately with these groups, ELISA Project has vertical use cases such as Aerospace, Automotive. Medical etc. 

He also explains how ELISA Project is interacting with other communities such as Xen Project, Zephyr Project on safety critical topics, Automotive Grade Linux, SOAFEE and SDV on automotive use cases and Yocto project for build tooling and SBOM generation and SPDX for system SBOM data requirements.

In addition to the different work groups and their interactions Philipp also explained on the contributions of the different groups, use cases, used methodologies such as STPA and workload tracing and a status update on what to expect from ELISA Project.

As Philipp mentioned, based on George Bernard Shaw’s quote “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” we need to get a good understanding and bring things together.

Watch Philipp’s talk here: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/elisa/

We hope you enjoyed attending FOSDEM, met your friends👫 and colleagues and enjoyed the famous Belgium waffles🧇, fries🍟 and Beer🍻. 

What it takes to employ Linux in safety applications : An interview with Shuah Khan

By Blog, Industry Conference, Mentorship

During the Open Source Summit Europe 2022, Shuah Khan, Linux Kernel Fellow at the Linux Foundation and previously the Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee, met with Mike Vizard, Chief Content Officer, Techstrong TV, to discuss what it takes to employ Linux in safety applications and why the open source community is still looking to train top-notch maintainers.

This interview narrates the fundamental details that you need to know if you are new to ELISA Project and planning to contribute or get involved in the LF Project or any open source projects under Linux Foundation. The theme of the questions spanned from the need of safety programs and how Linux is involved in safety critical applications to how gender diversity and STEM education plays a role in the open source community and contribution.

ELISA Project as you know is simply defined as Enabling Linux In Safety Applications. Shuah Khan explains how ELISA is involved in many uses like automotive, medical etc and how the community is bringing together the safety experts to maintain safety critical platforms. She also explains with an example on how the project works in an automotive use case. When it comes to safety certification, she explains how ELISA Project is helping with the resources for the community that are planning to certify their safety critical platforms running in Linux. The role of safety experts and the kernel experts are like bread and butter. While safety experts look at the safety angle of the product or platform, kernel experts bridge the gap between safety and kernel.

There are sometimes concerns in people’s minds that in the future the regulators might be asking tough questions about safety when they develop medical, automotive applications. There are also lots of costs involved for these certifications. Considering the economical situation now, how the ELISA project can help the community is worthwhile.

For those who are currently studying or looking to get involved in the ELISA Project to learn more about Kernel and safety certification process, starting from this part (06:00) of the interview is a must watch.

This part explains about the talent ELISA Project is looking for, how LFX mentorship program helps the newcomers to integrate into the open source community, to help the code in and make them an expert in their preferred field.

In many cases, some are often uninformed about the possibilities of learning or don’t know where to start with the open source contribution. What we want to convey is our project has structural programs, resources to work and kernel webinars to learn. At the end of the program, there is also a virtual mentee showcase where the mentees explain about what they have done during the program to the member company representatives which is a potential opportunity for further steps like job or research programs.

The interview also discusses the outreach programs to attract talents from various parts of the world and the STEM initiatives.

We invite you to watch this video to learn more and if it helped you to learn something new, then share it with your communities: https://techstrong.tv/videos/open-source-summit-europe-2022/shuah-khan-the-linux-foundation-open-source-summit-europe-2022.

Learn more about the ELISA Project here

Bosch and XPENG Motors join the ELISA Project to Strengthen their Commitment to Safety-Critical Applications in Automobiles

By Announcement, ELISA Summit, Industry Conference, News

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.

For more information about ELISA, visit https://elisa.tech/.

About the Linux Foundation

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.

Open Source Summit North America (Videos)

By Blog, Industry Conference, Working Group

This year, Open Source Summit North America was held as an umbrella conference, composed of a collection of 14 events covering the most important technologies, topics, and issues affecting open source today in June. There were a total of 2,771 attendees with 1,286 of those attending in person in Austin, from 1,041 organizations across 68 countries around the globe. The event attracted a diversified mix of open source community members from across the ecosystem. 54% of attendees were in technical positions, and developers comprised more than a quarter of attendees. You can read the post-event report here. You can also view all of the event playlists on the Linux Foundation Youtube Channel.

The ELISA Project was featured in several sessions and represented by ambassadors and community members at the conference. If you missed these presentations, you can watch the videos below:

Enabling Linux in Safety Applications (panel discussion)Gabriele Paoloni, Red Hat (ELISA board chair) Kate Stewart, Linux Foundation (ELISA Executive Director) Paul Albertella, CodeThink (Open Source Engineering Process) Elana Copperman, Intel (Linux Features) Philipp Ahmann, Bosch GmbH (Automotive) Milan Lakhani, Codethink (Medical Devices) 

Meeting business and safety objectives while building safety critical applications is a huge challenge for any industry, particularly those who have not had previous experience with open source and Linux. ELISA’s charter is to help industries navigate technical and non-technical challenges in order to bring the benefits of open source to safety applications and help organizations provide the rigor needed for certification. This panel features ELISA working group leads who will share their vision of making Linux a prominent player for FuSa applications in several industries. Join us to learn more about the project and how you can contribute to the community’s overall success.

Finding the Path from Embedded to Edge using Product LinesSteffen Evers, Bosch.IO & Philipp Ahmann, Robert Bosch GmBH

Linux is used for many embedded device classes today. However, it is increasingly desirable to connect these devices with each other and with the cloud. Embedded container technology can be used to make this easier by merging server/cloud and embedded technologies. However, it also leads to more challenges e.g. in respect to security, safety, traceability, and SBOMs. Using Linux across multiple device classes and product lines, and adding cloud technology, causes the complexity and efforts to explode.

In this talk, we describe how Bosch, and others, use embedded containers and “reference systems” to avoid redundant work and get a large number of embedded projects under control.

A reference system is an adjustable compilation of tools along with a pre-configured bundle of packages for a common use case and defined set of devices. This reuse significantly reduces development and maintenance costs, and speeds up the time to market. In this way, reference systems can form the base for your product lines.

Bosch uses the in-house Debian-based embedded distribution “Apertis” as the basis for several reference systems, e.g. for automotive infotainment systems. In doing so we push as many efforts as possible from individual projects into Apertis, as the meta-layer. Thereby, the users can focus more on the actual functionality and applications. e.g. one issue that we have addressed in the context of software management is the handling of GPLv3 in embedded devices. Another topic has been mainline support for kernel drivers.

BOF: SBOMs for Embedded Systems: What’s Working? What’s Not? – Kate Stewart

With the recent focus on improving Cybersecurity in IoT & Embedded, the expectation that a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) can be produced, is becoming the norm. Having a clear understanding of the software running on an embedded system, especially in safety critical applications,  like medical devices, energy infrastructure, etc. has become essential.  Regulatory authorities have recognized this and are starting to expect it as a condition for engagement.  This BOF will provide an overview of the emerging regulatory landscape, as well as examples of how SBOMs are already being generated today for embedded systems by open source projects such as Zephyr, Yocto and others,  followed by a discussion of the gaps folks are seeing in practice, and ways we might tackle them.

Static Partitioning with Xen, LinuxRT, and Zephyr: A Concrete End-to-end Example – Stefano Stabellini, AMD

Static partitioning enables multiple domains to run alongside each other with no interference. They could be running Linux, an RTOS, or another OS, and all of them have direct access to different portions of the SoC. In the last five years, the Xen community introduced several new features to make Xen-based static partitioning possible. Dom0less to start multiple static domains in parallel at boot, and Cache Coloring to minimize cache interference effects are among them. Static inter-domain communications mechanisms were introduced this year, while “ImageBuilder” has been making system-wide configurations easier. An easy-to-use complete solution is within our grasp. This talk will show the progress made on Xen static partitioning. The audience will learn to configure a realistic reference design with multiple partitions: a LinuxRT partition, a Zephyr partition, and a larger Linux partition. The presentation will show how to set up communication channels and direct hardware access for the domains. It will explain how to measure interrupt latency and use cache coloring to zero cache interference effects. The talk will include a live demo of the reference design.

RTLA: Real-time Linux Analysis Toolset – Daniel Bristot De Oliveira, Red Hat

Currently, Real-time Linux is evaluated using a black-box approach. While the black-box method provides an overview of the system, it fails to provide a root cause analysis for unexpected values. Developers have to use kernel trace features to debug these cases, requiring extensive knowledge about the system and fastidious tracing setup and breakdown. Such analysis will be even more impactful after the PREEMPT_RT merge. To support these cases, since version 5.17, the Linux kernel includes a new tool named rtla, which stands for Real-time Linux Analysis. The rtla is a meta-tool that consists of a set of commands that aims to analyze the real-time properties of Linux. Instead of testing Linux as a black box, rtla leverages kernel tracing capabilities to provide precise information about latencies and root causes of unexpected results. In this talk, Daniel will present two tools provided by rtla. The timerlat tool to measure IRQ and thread latency for interrupt-driven applications and the osnoise tool to evaluate the ability of Linux to isolate workload from the interferences from the rest of the system. The presentation includes examples of how to use the tool to find the root cause analysis and collect extra tracing information directly from the tool.

Join us at ELISA Project September Events

By Blog, Industry Conference, News, Working Group, Workshop

Launched in February 2019, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project 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.

If you’re new to the project and would like to learn more about the community, ELISA has several upcoming events in September that you can attend to meet ambassadors or project members, receive updates about technical milestones and goals of each of the working groups and ask questions or get involved. Focused Working Groups include Automotive, Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems, Medical Devices, Open Source Engineer Processes, Safety Architecture, Systems and Tool Investigation and Code Improvement and they are always looking for more participants.

September events:

  • 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. View the schedule here. 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, Ireland, 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.
  • ELISA Workshop – Hosted in-person in Manchester, England, at Codethink offices. This workshop offers an opportunity for active ELISA contributors and members to have interactive discussions on predetermined topics and have side-by-side working sessions. Learn more.