Thoughts on CTIC 2023 conference and safety certification on multi-core processors

I recently attended the Certification Together International Conference (CTIC 2023) in Toulouse with some Wind River colleagues. CTIC is a bi-annual event and is quite unique, as it allows all the main actors in the avionics sector to gather and discuss latest trends and common challenges in a very open and constructive way. The presence of representatives from EASA and FAA, moreover, provides an added value, since it is possible to discuss, learn, get clarifications from these civil aviation certification authorities.

The 2023 conference was the first one taking place since the COVID-19 pandemic and provided a great opportunity to discuss what happened in the avionics world during the last three years. Three main trends emerged rapidly, trends that pose many new challenges: multicore processors, security, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Multi-core processors still present challenges in relation to safety, despite their presence in the aerospace industry for almost a decade. There is still more to do for avionics community to gain widespread confidence in this technology, both from a hardware and software standpoint.  A multi-core processor is a very complex device made of many subsystems, for example, the DPAA engine on NXP’s QorIQ T-series (Power architecture) and Layerscape (ARM architecture). The DPAA engine can be programmed to perform a specific task, but details of their internal operation may require access to proprietary design information.  It is important to analyze and understand the behaviour of these subsystems, and to be able to manage the processor’s shared resources to reduce multicore interference (and non-determinism) in order to achieve confidence in the system being used and be successful in avionics safety certification.

Security has emerged quite rapidly as emerging trend in the last eighteen months, following EUROCAE’s publication of the ED-202A / ED-203A / ED-204A suite of documents on airworthiness security (and are equivalent to the RTCA DO-326A, DO-355A and DO-356A published in the US). The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has made their adoption mandatory for new aircraft design flying through European civil airspace and also for some legacy systems. The feedback from several conference sessions what that there isn’t a common understanding yet on how to address these airworthiness security requirements. So, the integration of airworthiness security processes with established avionics safety processes will require the close collaboration of safety and security experts.

Finally, Artificial Intelligence has entered the avionics world, not just as a buzzword, but as a technology that could potentially assist pilots in taking the right decision or even acting quickly when the humans are not able to prevent catastrophic situations to happen. Current state-of-the-art AI technology is not mature enough yet to introduce “true” AI into an actively flying system. However, EASA and companies such as Airbus have defined a roadmap that will involve AI gradually being used in safety critical contexts. The five year roadmap is ambitious and will require engagement and collaboration by the major stakeholders in the aviation industry.

Wind River was a Platinum Sponsor of CITC 2023 and we had a booth where we met our customers and prospects to discuss their requirements and challenges in a very open and constructive way. Wind River platforms have a proven track record in safety-critical avionics systems for over twenty years and can help solve the challenges for multicore (managing resources in a pre-determined controlled way), but also for security and AI (hosting different applications in separate partitions at different levels of criticality and enforcing control and data flows in a deterministic manner).

If you weren’t able to attend CITC and would like to discuss your business and technical challenges related to the above themes, then please contact Wind River.

About the author:

Massimiliano De Otto is Senior Field Application Engineer at Wind River