The Multicore Conundrum: Overcoming Barriers In The Adoption Of Multicore Platforms In VTOL Avionics Systems

Abstract

The demand for smaller, lighter avionics in vertical take-off and landing aircraft requires advanced processing capabilities, pushing beyond single-core processor limitations. While multi-core processors offer significant computational gains, their integration into safety-critical avionics presents substantial certification and engineering challenges. The demonstration of the software determinism on multi-core processors is of high complexity for current commercial-off-the-shelf platform solutions. Their unpredictable architectures and undocumented features lead to contentions and hard to compute worst-case execution time when shared resources are accessed. This paper focuses on Airbus Helicopters' strategy to overcome those barriers by identifying, characterizing, and mitigating the sources of non-determinism. It highlights that a traditional top-down development approach from system requirements is not sufficient on its own to cope with the challenge of integrating multi-core for critical software. The approach described in the paper integrates an adaptive, iterative system engineering process that complements the top-down approach with a bottom-up approach based on the outcomes of the Hardware and Software design.