How much effort does it take to verify multicore software to A(M)C 20-193?

The effort required to meet the objectives of the A(M)C 20-193 is heavily dependent on a number of factors, not least the complexity of the platform and software. With the same high-level requirements, the certification effort associated with a project could have orders of magnitude in difference depending on the platform, RTOS and configuration used, and software architecture choices made. For a simple platform with a carefully curated configuration of active devices and interference channel mitigations in place, together with sensibly structured software, some small number of person years effort may be required. A complex, no compromises platform used to host software with a complex architecture may require tens or even hundreds of person years of effort, and for such a system, there may even be no clear path to certification.

The key to an achievable certification is early planning. Taking multicore certification into account at early design and decision-making stages not only de-risks the certification itself, but will also have massive time and cost saving impacts.

More information on making decisions related to processor, RTOS and software architecture are discussed in a series of dedicated white papers in MACH¹⁷⁸ Foundations focused on each area.