Multicore timing analysis

Multicore systems are being used more and more in real-time embedded systems for critical software. While these systems offer improved performance, using them makes verification of hosted application's timing behavior challenging due to interference effects caused by contention for shared hardware resources. For multicore systems to be verified on a multicore system, interference channels must be understood, and tests must be run to demonstrate that timing budgets can be met in realistic interference scenarios.

Rapita's RVS software, Multicore Timing Solution and MACH¹⁷⁸ solution support multicore timing analysis for critical aerospace and automotive software.

The Multicore Timing Solution supports the development and verification of multicore systems in the aerospace and automotive domains, supporting use cases such as evaluating multicore platforms, analyzing multicore timing behavior and producing assurance evidence.

The MACH¹⁷⁸ solution offers an end-to-end solution to support the certification of multicore avionics against DO-178C, A(M)C 20-193 and CAST-32A guidelines.

RVS makes multicore timing analysis efficient by automating key stages in the process:

• RapiTest creates test harnesses to test for multicore timing behavior and runs these on the target hardware
• RapiTime instruments the code so execution times and values from Hardware Event Monitors on the hardware can be collected during tests
• RapiTask can be used to visualize the scheduling behavior of multicore applications and identify rare events such as priority inversions