MC-ADAMS

The challenging timing behavior caused by modern hardware/software high performance architectures prevents the use of such platforms in real-time systems. State-of-the-art approaches focus on strict isolation mechanisms to guarantee reliable timing of safety-critical applications. However, the performance of the entire system suffers as a result.

At the Institute of Computer and Network Engineering, we propose a different approach to address the challenging timing behaviour that relies on a established technique from fault-tolerant system design, namely modular redundancy. In systems with higher criticality, modularity is mandatory to raise the reliability of a system above that of their components. In Avionics, modular redundancy is commonly used to detect hardware errors and software errors, additionally we extend it to mask timing outliers. We call this approach Timing Diversity.

A Timing Diversity set-up consists of at least two hardware platforms. A safety-critical application is executed on both hardware platforms. As timing errors should be sporadic (safety critical functions are usually well specified and tested due to certification), it may be assumed a timing error does not occur on two hardware platforms simultaneously. As a consequence, one platform provides the correct result before deadline.

The MC-ADAMS project involves 4 national partners:

• Technische Universität Hamburg, Institut für Flugzeug-Systemtechnik
• Technische Universität Braunschweig, Institut für Flugführung
• Technische Universität Braunschweig, Institut für Datentechnik und Kommunikationsnetze
• Technische Universität Dortmund, Embedded Systems

The following people are currently involved in the MC-ADAMS project:

• Anika Christmann
• Robin Hapka