Certified Multi-Core Support

Originally driven by railway industry demands, PikeOS was the first OS to achieve SIL 4 certification with multi-core support. Since then, its architecture has evolved to include:

• Advanced cache and lock management
• Fine-grained kernel locking
• Bandwidth monitoring for user applications

These features minimize core interference and ensure predictable, deterministic behavior, meeting rigorous standards like AMC 20-193 (EASA guidance for using multi-core processors in airborne systems).

Another extension originates from the Automotive world. In order to provide instant responsiveness to external events, the OS combines the fixed time partition schemes with priority-driven thread scheduling.

A thread within a Safety-critical partition can be assigned to a special time partition that is always active. By executing this thread with a sufficient priority, it may interrupt any other operation on the same processor core instantly. This allows an immediate reaction to incidents that have been raised externally. This mechanism is especially useful for the handling of asynchronous events which may  occur frequently in autonomous driving vehicles or braking systems.

The same mechanism can be used for non-critical applications in order to utilize background time that would otherwise be unused. Here, a thread within the always active time partition is assigned to a low priority. In case a high-critical partition clears its processor time, the lower priority thread may execute background operations.

The ability to execute a thread in this special time partition is a setting that must be unlocked explicitly in the partition configuration. In addition, each partition owns a property that strictly controls the maximum allowed priority. These static settings are enforced by the PikeOS kernel at runtime unconditionally, ensuring deterministic behaviour of critical applications under all conditions.