First solution recognized by EASA for the parallel operation of multicore platforms

Making the skies cleaner and greener has been one of the major objectives of the aeronautics sector for several years. The industry aims to reduce the fuel consumption of future aircraft by 40 to 70 percent. To achieve this goal, new generations of equipment have been developed, such as engines using sustainable fuels (SAF), hybrid engines and electric motors, among others.

Embedded software is core in this transition. On-board electronic systems ensure the proper functioning of motors by controlling their regulation. To meet the requirements of these new propulsion systems, computing capacities must be significantly increased while respecting safety and energy efficiency constraints. Single-core processors must therefore be replaced by more powerful multi-core processors. However, software must be able to exploit its full potential! Indeed, current solutions are limited to running programs in isolation on each core but never simultaneously (in other words, in parallel), amounting to executing them one after the other without any performance gain.

ASTERIOS: an EASA-recognized solution to manage multi-core processors. Designed to master the parallel and simultaneous execution of critical programs, ASTERIOS has successfully passed the SOI#3 audit in the DO-178C / DAL A standard for a helicopter engine control project. This audit marks an important step towards the validation by the authorities of the ASTERIOS approach that ensures that programs run predictably and reliably, regardless of the type of processors used by the system. ASTERIOS has already proven its effectiveness on single-core processors and will continue to do so on multi-core ones.