A comparison between Hardware and Software Solutions for Resource Partitioning in Multicore-based Mixed Criticality Applications

The paper proposes a comparison between hardware and software solutions for resource partitioning in the scenario of a multi-core based mixed criticality application. A reference avionic application has been implemented in two versions: one using a software partitioning solution and one using a hardware partitioning solution. Both versions of the system have been evaluated using fault injection simulation experiments. Results show that the hardware solution can provide better isolation with respect to the software solutions when soft errors affecting processor memory elements are considered. Conversely, when software defects are of concerns, the two solutions provide the same level of robustness. Keywords—avionic; multi-core; mixed-criticality; consolidation; fault-tolerance; system-on-programmable-chip (SoPC); hypervisor (HV); intellectual property (IP); critical partition (CP); critical application (CA); non-critical partition (NCP); non-critical application (NCA); system watchdog timer (SWDT); watchdog (WD); single event upset (SEU); software bug (SwB)