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Advanced Air Mobility

Compositing Mixed-Criticality Cockpit Graphics on a Shared GPU

How a large Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for avionics and flight control systems, is combining content from many applications into one cockpit display with Lynx CoreSuite 2.0

 

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Key Capabilities

GitLab CI/CD

DOORS

VectorCAST

AdaCore

SaFe Agile

compositor

Figure 1. Many producers at different assurance levels, one combined picture. Illustrative.

Customer An integrated avionics supplier developing systems for low-altitude and advanced air mobility aircraft
Industry Advanced air mobility
Application Distributed cockpit graphics with central compositing
Lynx Products Lynx CoreSuite 2.0
Platform Virtualized ARINC 653 multi-partition RTOS with an AMD Radeon Embedded E9171 GPU

 

The Challenge

A modern cockpit combines content from many applications into a single picture. These applications often come from different teams and suppliers and are developed to different assurance levels: flight instruments and alerts sit at the top of the scale, while maps, video and maintenance pages sit lower. The supplier must merge all of them into one display without letting a fault in a lower-assurance application corrupt what the pilot relies on. The combined image must also stay timely and predictable, frame after frame.

The graphics layer adds a further question. When several partitions and more than one compositor share a GPU, the supplier needs a safety-critical driver stack and a way to show that the GPU is still drawing correctly. 

The Solution

The customer runs each application in its own ARINC 653 partition and renders through OpenGL SC 2.0. Compositor partitions combine the content from the producing applications into the final display images, and the virtualization platform enforces spatial and temporal separation between partitions at different assurance levels.

Lynx CoreSuite 2.0 supplies the safety-critical GPU stack. Its OpenGL SC 2.0 libraries let every partition share the GPU, and its TrueCore safety monitor continuously checks the integrity of the GPU’s output.

combined display output-1

Figure 2. Compositing across partitions on a shared GPU. Illustrative. 

The Benefits

  • One picture from many sources. Applications from different teams and suppliers merge into a single cockpit display.
  • Containment. A fault in a lower-assurance partition stays in that partition.
  • Flexible layouts. Display content can change without reworking the safety-critical applications.
  • GPU integrity. TrueCore gives continuous verification of what the GPU produces.

 

capabilities

Lynx CoreSuite 2.0 in This Solution

    • OpenGL SC 2.0 graphics libraries. Safety-critical graphics libraries that let several partitions render on the same GPU.
    • TrueCore. A GPU safety monitor that continuously verifies the integrity of GPU graphics and compute output.

Questions to Ask When Compositing Mixed-Criticality Graphics

    • How is GPU access shared between application and compositor partitions, and what evidence covers the driver stack?
    • How is the composited output checked for integrity before it reaches the pilot?
    • How are timing and frame rate kept predictable when several producers and compositors share one GPU?
    • How does the platform stop a fault in a lower-assurance application from reaching flight-critical display content?

Seize the Edge™

Lynx Software Technologies builds trusted software platforms for commercial aerospace, defense and space. Its portfolio includes LYNX MOSA.ic.AI framework for mixed-criticality systems and the CoreSuite 2.0 safety-critical GPU software.
Talk to a Lynx engineer about safety-critical graphics and mixed-criticality platforms for your cockpit.

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