Model-based generation of static schedules for safety critical multi-core systems in the avionics domain

Static schedules are used in safety critical systems to achieve predictable, real-time behavior. While it was possible to construct static schedules manually for simple, single-core systems, the increase in complexity introduced by multi-core processors and the demand for flexible and dynamic engineering processes in the avionics domain, require a novel approach for their automatic generation. This paper describes ongoing trends in the avionics domain to further underline engineering constraints encountered, when introducing multi-core processors in a safety critical area. By focussing on the requirement of a predictable behavior, a model-based approach for the generation of static schedules for complex multi-core systems is presented. It incorporates the usage of external resources, which is essential to achieve deterministic resource access and real-time behavior on hardware architectures with multiple execution units.