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Certifiable RISC-V Linux and RTOS core sharing with VOSySmonitoRV

Maximum system resources virtualization efficiency and certifiability with VOSySmonitoRV

Virtual Open Systems provides certifiable virtualization solutions for Risc-V, ARM, x86 processor architectures

VOSySmonitoRV is a certifiable secure monitor firmware for RISC-V SoCs that targets mixed criticality use cases in automotive, transportation and industrial market segments. In such use cases there is a continuous demand for an higher CPU performance, consequently making of an efficient use of the system resources a pivotal requirement to meet user expectation. In addition, certification is a must in these environments which have to provide the highest system security and isolation.

To address both these high performance and the safety requirements, Virtual Open Systems has designed VOSySmonitoRV within its safety development process with continuous integration MISRA-C checks (the same process has been already used to certify the company product VOSySmonitor up to ASIL-C). In addition, a new core sharing feature has been developed to enable concurrent co-execution of Linux and a Real Time Operating System (RTOS) on a single CPU core; a feature which is very important to provide the most efficient use of CPU resources and to enable the execution of multiple OSes in RISC-V microcontroller and processors. Moreover, RISC-V CPU virtualization extensions are not needed to run VOSySmonitoRV, that enables virtualization via an isolated partitioning of the system resources.

VOSySmonitoRV: virtualization of Linux and FreeRTOS running on a single core RISC-V platform

Linux and FreeRTOS share a RISC-V CPU core with VOSySmonitoRV - FreeRTOS boots in 10ms

In this demonstration VOSySmonitoRV runs on a HiFive Unleashed platform equipped with four CPU cores (also known as harts in RISC-V). Thanks to the core sharing feature of VOSySmonitoRV, it is possible to allocate all the system cores to Linux and, among these cores, one of them is shared with FreeRTOS. The VOSySmonitoRV core sharing feature clearly allows a more efficient use of the system resources, boosting Linux performance when the RTOS is idle. The RTOS performance is not impacted when Linux CPUs are under stress. More in detail, the video demo shows the following characteristics of VOSySmonitoRV:

  • One CPU core is shared between Linux and FreeROTS, thus optimising the use of resources
  • The RTOS is booted in ~10ms, guaranteeing best boot time for the safety critical environment
  • Crashes or intensive use of the CPU from Linux do not impact FreeRTOS functionality
Vosysmonitorv, A Virtualization Core Sharing Mixed Critical Solution For Risc-V VOSySmonitoRV, a virtualization core sharing mixed critical execution environment running Linux and FreeRTOS on RISC-V