COTS based functional security computer

Project introduction

Functional safety, also known as functional safety, refers to an integral part of the overall safety of a system or equipment. The way to achieve safety depends on the normal action of the system or component parts after receiving the input signal. For example, a motor is equipped with a temperature sensor. If the temperature exceeds a certain value, the motor will stop running. This function belongs to functional safety. The basic principle of functional safety is formulated in military, nuclear and space industries. After that, different standards in various fields have been developed in the railway industry and program control. Functional safety standards are applicable to all industries with safety critical requirements. Thousands of products and procedures comply with IEC en 61508 or its derived regulations.
The control system based on the relay has a safe state. When the system fails (such as power failure), the relay will be disconnected under the action of the earth's gravity. However, modern computer systems are based on semiconductor technology and have no safe state. Therefore, in safety critical occasions, computers can not be directly used to control the system.
Safety computer system refers to the failure oriented safety of the system in case of failure, that is, the output of the system is directed to the safe side in case of failure, so as to avoid major loss of life and property. Safety computer is widely used in safety critical fields such as aerospace, military industry, chemical energy, rail transit and so on. The computer system is required to have the ability to operate stably and reliably for a long time and the ability to avoid major disasters. Because the current electronic component computer itself does not have the inherent "fault safety" characteristics, resulting in the unpredictable output results of the computer system composed of it in case of failure, it is necessary to make the system in a safe state in case of computer failure by adopting special fault-tolerant structure and special operating system. Equipment failure is inevitable. In order to prevent the system from dangerous consequences in case of equipment failure, appropriate system structure and design method must be adopted to realize the "fault safety" characteristics of safety computer. The most commonly used technology is fault tolerance technology.
Cots, commercial off the shelf, translates into "commercial ready-made products or technologies" or "commercial shelf products", which refers to software or hardware products with open standard defined interfaces that can be purchased, which can save cost and time.
In terms of hardware, cots is widely used as the basis of security computer, which is an important means to reduce the R & D and manufacturing cost of functional security computer and ensure the security of supply chain. In terms of software, the goal of this project is to establish an "open source industrial computer system alliance" through cooperation with the open source community, realize the sharing of R & D resources to a certain extent and reduce the R & D and upgrading costs of functional computers in the whole society.

Project website: https://e.gitee.com/peixilong/projects/313416

Contact us

email: pei_ xilong@tongji.edu.cn
Pei Xilong Pei (Mr.)
College of electronics and information engineering, Tongji University
4800 Cao'an highway, Jiading District, Shanghai 201804, P. R. China