VOSySmonitoRV: a mixed-criticality solution on Linux-capable RISC-V platforms

TL;DR

This paper introduces VOSySmonitoRV, a novel mixed-criticality solution for RISC-V platforms that enables secure, isolated co-execution of multiple operating systems without hardware virtualization extensions, ensuring safety and real-time performance.

Contribution

VOSySmonitoRV provides a new approach for mixed-criticality systems on RISC-V by enabling OS co-execution without hardware virtualization extensions, addressing security and safety concerns.

Findings

Achieves secure, isolated co-execution of multiple OSes on RISC-V

Provides measurable real-time performance metrics

Demonstrates feasibility without hardware virtualization extensions

Abstract

Embedded systems are pervasively used in many fields nowadays. In mixed-criticality environments (automotive, industry 4.0, drones, etc.) they need to run real-time applications with certain time and safety constraints alongside a rich operating system (OS). This is usually possible thanks to virtualization techniques, that leverage on hardware virtualization extensions on the machine. However, these hardware extensions might not cope with the security and safety requirements of the specific use case, and additionally, they might not always be available. A notable example is the emerging RISC-V architecture, that is today gaining a lot of traction in the mixed criticality field, but that do not offer today hardware virtualization extensions. In this paper VOSySmonitoRV is proposed as a mixed-criticality solution for RISC-V systems. VOSySmonitoRVallows the co-execution of two or more operating systems in a secure and isolated manner by running in the highest privileged machine level. A specific benchmark, measuring the interrupt latency and context switch time is done to assess the system performance in mixed criticality systems.