Virtualizing Mixed-Criticality Systems: A Survey on Industrial Trends and Issues
It addresses the need for flexible and reliable system integration in industrial applications, but is incremental as it reviews existing trends without introducing new methods.
This survey examines real-time virtualization technologies for integrating mixed-criticality software on shared hardware, analyzing their impact on isolation, testing, and dependability to guide industrial practitioners.
Virtualization is gaining attraction in the industry as it promises a flexible way to integrate, manage, and re-use heterogeneous software components with mixed-criticality levels, on a shared hardware platform, while obtaining isolation guarantees. This work surveys the state-of-the-practice of real-time virtualization technologies by discussing common issues in the industry. In particular, we analyze how different virtualization approaches and solutions can impact isolation guarantees and testing/certification activities, and how they deal with dependability challenges. The aim is to highlight current industry trends and support industrial practitioners to choose the most suitable solution according to their application domains.