Virtualizing Mixed-Criticality Systems: A Survey on Industrial Trends and Issues

TL;DR

This survey reviews industrial trends and challenges in virtualizing mixed-criticality systems, focusing on isolation, dependability, and certification issues to guide practitioners in selecting appropriate virtualization solutions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of real-time virtualization technologies, analyzing their impact on isolation, testing, and dependability in industrial applications.

Findings

Different virtualization approaches affect isolation guarantees.

Virtualization impacts testing and certification processes.

Industry trends favor flexible, shared hardware platforms for mixed-criticality systems.

Abstract

Virtualization is gaining attraction in the industry as it promises a flexible way to integrate, manage, and re-use heterogeneous software components with mixed-criticality levels, on a shared hardware platform, while obtaining isolation guarantees. This work surveys the state-of-the-practice of real-time virtualization technologies by discussing common issues in the industry. In particular, we analyze how different virtualization approaches and solutions can impact isolation guarantees and testing/certification activities, and how they deal with dependability challenges. The aim is to highlight current industry trends and support industrial practitioners to choose the most suitable solution according to their application domains.