Multicore partitioned systems based on hypervisor

Abstract Multi-core processors are increasingly being considered to provide the performance required by future safety critical systems. In some domains like space, it is specially significant due to the processor technology frequency is limited by the presence of radiation. In that case, the way to increase computing power can be achieved by the use of multi-core systems. There is a number of challenges involved in the migration to multi-core processor architectures in safety-critical embedded systems domain which are still unresolved and which contribute to increase the complexity of the design. Even if multi-core processors may offer several benefits to embedded systems, their use is not straightforward. Virtualization techniques maturity have reach the level to offer guarantees in critical systems. In this paper, we present a multi-core hypervisor for mixed-criticality applications as one of the results of the MultiPARTES project. The paper analyse the design and implementation of XtratuM for multi-core and details a performance analysis to determine the overheads incurred by the virtualization layer and presents some results when shared resources are considered.