An Introduction to RTA-VRTE

The AUTOSAR Classic Platform (CP) has been developed in response to the increasing complex requirements of automotive software. Supporting hard real-time, high safety, low resource availability ECUs, it remains well suited to traditional automotive use cases such as those ECUs directly connected to sensors and actuators.

AUTOSAR is developing the Adaptive Platform (AP) to address future requirements of connectivity, autonomy, new ownership models, etc. These require more flexibility in the application domain such as the ability to change the installed software to adapt to a changing environment. Consequently, the static configuration of the Classic Platform is not suitable and the Platform supports dynamic communication and parallelism.

Adaptive AUTOSAR is a catalyst for change within automotive enabling the introduction of new application domains and new E/E architectures. However, the Adaptive Platform does not (yet) address all the issues that are relevant for cross-domain integration and vehicle computation E/E architectures. Hence, ETAS, together with Bosch, is building RTA-VRTE to address the challenges.

RTA-VRTE derives from and extends the Adaptive Platform providing functional extensions for a rich and expressive environment for software execution including Vehicle-specific functionality for diagnosis, life-cycle management, etc. The RTA-VRTE product family includes a hypervisor that enables support for the Classic/Adaptive-mixed use case, e.g. a high-performance microprocessor using the hypervisor for isolation of CP/AP domains. Here the RTA-VRTE’s hypervisor supports the domain controller type-ECU, integrating multiple ECU functionality onto a single high-performance node.

What’s in the Box?

RTA-VRTE Early Access Program provides a “ready-to-go” Adaptive AUTOSAR environment consisting of one or more Host Virtual Machines (VMs) running on the Host PCs. Within the Host VMs, multiple Target ECUs execute Adaptive AUTOSAR Applications using multiple instances of the Adaptive Platform.

Each Target ECU provides a separate instance of the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform and supports the execution of Adaptive AUTOSAR applications. Using multiple Target ECUs enables the distribution of Adaptive AUTOSAR applications across ECUs that communicate using standard Adaptive AUTOSAR network protocols.

RTA-VRTE supports both QNX and Linux operating systems (more will be added based on customer demand). As well as the virtual Target ECUs, initial hardware support includes the NXPS32V (ARM v8) and x86 with more devices on the road-map for 2019 – including R-CAR M3 and NVIDIA Xavier microprocessors.

Adaptive AUTOSAR

The RTA-VRTE Early Access Program includes access to development releases of the RTA-VRTE product. The current release is based on AUTOSAR AP18-03 and includes all the functional clusters necessary for the development of distributed communicating Adaptive Applications:

• Execution Management supporting the controlled startup and shutdown of the Adaptive Platform. Additionally, the State Management functional cluster works with Execution Management to provide run-time startup/shutdown of application software.
• Communication Management supporting both intra-machine communication and SOME/IP for inter-ECU communication.
• Persistency for access to the underlying file system
• Platform Health Monitoring (prototype)
• Cryptography
• Log&Trace for application monitoring

Additionally, the RTA-VRTE Early Access Program includes Adaptive Studio — an AUTOSAR configuration tool that provides custom editors for configuration of Execution Management and mapping provided/required services to SOME/IP.

Adaptive Studio also includes a Domain Specific Language (DSL) that automatically compiles to ARXML and makes the specification of service interfaces much easier than working with the ARXML directly. As an example, using the DSL you can define a new service interface with an event and a method as simply as:

Which compiles to 47 lines of ARXML!

Roadmap

The RTA-VRTE Early Access Program is available now. For a single fee the product includes access to development releases of RTA-VRTE for 12-months but also on-site training on the Adaptive Platform and consultancy support to enable you to get up-and-running developing Adaptive Applications.

RTA-VRTE has a packed road-map that will both extend the already supported functional clusters and add new features with every release – contact us for more details and how to join the RTA-VRTE Early Access Program.