Building Safe Systems with Linux - Nicholas McGuire, OpenTech

Описание: Building Safe Systems with Linux - Nicholas McGuire, OpenTech

With the increasing complexity of technical systems, as in autonomous robotic systems, the functionality of safety-related systems is dramatically changing and calling for elaborate capabilities, while at the same time demanding a high level of assurance. Linux is on the shortlist of many projects now due to its utility, its security capabilities, and its versatility, but can it be safe? It can be answered by assessing conformance to current functional safety standards. Defining and developing adequate methodologies for a safe Linux-based system was the goal of OSADL's SIL2LinuxMP project. Based on three years of work on SIL2LinuxMP at OSADL, Linux is a suitable candidate for complex safety-related systems.

The challenge is mapping the intent of functional safety standards to the concrete properties, capabilities, and limits of Linux. This talk shows the project's approach to compliance.

About Nicholas McGuire
After working on Magnetic bearing control systems at the Technical University of Vienna, in 1995, Nicholas McGuire moved towards the other end of the spectrum towards clusters at the Inst. for Computational Material Science at the University of Vienna. With the focus shifting to real-time and distributed embedded systems, initially maintaining RTLinux/GPL (2001-2005), safety related systems were an almost natural next step since 2003. Nicholas main topic is system safety since he founded OpenTech, with a special focus on the utilization of pre-existing FLOSS/COTS components in safety-related systems and thus integration of high-complexity pre-existing (SOUP) components while retaining system level safety properties. He is the technical lead and main contributor in the OSADL SIL2LinuxMP project and has been giving talks at various conferences, FOSDEM, Embedded World, etc.