Commercial Off-the-Shelf Real-Time Operating System and Architectural Considerations;Rept. for May 02-03

摘要

This report investigates the safety aspects of using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) real-time operating system (RTOS) software in aviation systems. Because of the complexity and unknown integrity of many COTS RTOSs, there are a number of concerns regarding their use in aircraft systems, as they may potentially affect aircraft safety. Previous Federal Aviation Administration-sponsored research in this area identified COTS RTOS as a potential focus area for COTS in aviation software applications. This follow-on work considers the use of partition-supporting COTS RTOS in aviation systems. This report specifically studies the hardware and software architectural issues of embedded aviation software systems, with a particular focus on systems with the multilevel criticality partitioning provided by COTS RTOS. As a representative example, this report also discusses the PowerPC microprocessor architecture and how its architecture relates to the safety aspects of COTS RTOS running on this processor.