Migrating a Single-core AUTOSAR Application to a Multi-core Platform: Challenges, Strategies and Recommendations

Abstract

As performance requirements on automotive Electronic Control Units (ECU) increase, multi-core hardware is becoming more common. Due to increasing complexity of automotive software, a group of vehicle manufacturers specified a standard called Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR). Since 2009, AUTOSAR supports multi-core platforms. The single- to multi-core transition does not come without challenges, however. An AUTOSAR software stack consists of Basic Software (BSW), which is essentially the OS and the drivers, and the Application Software (ASW), which is the automotive application functionality. Both should be parallelized in order to fully utilize multi-core hardware. The automotive industry is highly reliant on legacy software that is thoroughly proven and tested. This software eventually needs to be adapted and migrated to multi-core platforms to enable the vehicle manufacturers to add more functionality, e.g., active safety and autonomous driving, without increasing system complexity to unacceptable levels. This thesis describes the migration process, both in theory and practice. We have surveyed recent research as well as worked with migration of a real-world AUTOSAR-based system. We found that the AUTOSAR-compliant OS significantly deviates from the AUTOSAR standard, with respect to multi-core support. It was concluded that most current strategies for multi-core migration cannot be used without modifications, due to these deviations. Finally, we suggest an approach for multi-core migration, where the legacy program execution order is preserved, which should be evaluated in future work.