Mission critical edge computing bundles for Industry 4.0
Lynx Software Technologies has bundled Its mission critical software together for edge computing in Industry 4.0.
Lynx is initially rolling out three new MOSA.ic bundles that bundle its secure hypervisor and Linux with a range of real time operating systems and connections to the cloud. The packages are MOSA.ic for Industrial, LYNX MOSA.ic for UAVs/Satellites, and LYNX MOSA.ic for Avionics.
Lynx refers to this as mission critical edge computing, which it estimates to be a $16bn software opportunity. These bundles bypass the restrictions imposed by typical embedded approaches to mission critical systems and allow developers create flexible and intelligent edge computing implementations.
The secure hypervisor technology has been proven in mission critical environments including commercial aviation, healthcare, and military aircraft and helicopters.
“Our traditional model is licensing and professional services but this is a shift to turnkey products,” said Ian Ferguson, VP of marketing at Lynx. “We are adding functionality so systems can talk to systems and to the Azure cloud with real time determinism at the edge.”
The key is the hypervisor that allows multiple operating systems to run together but separately on embedded multicore processors. “The separation kernel is small 20,000 lines of certifiable code that configures things and gets out of the way and this gives fine grain control of the cores,” he said. “We keep the virtual machines in the Windows world separate from the RTOS – that was great for safety and in industrial it becomes more about security. The bit that’s new for us is the layer on top with multiple nodes,” he added.
MOSA.ic for Industrial adds AzureRTOS (previously ThreadX) alongside Windows 10 and a connection to Microsoft’s Axure cloud service. “Starting with Azure in first release, we’ll get to Google and Amazon when customers ask for it,” said Ferguson.
Next: Edge computing bundles
“We’re not going to reinvent orchestration, and we’ll embrace techniques such as containers. One realisation that we’ve had over the last year that at the core of the company is we can see if the hardware is doing stuff it shouldn’t. The hypervisor is in a great place to check on the hardware for security and health monitoring – we think that really helps at the system level,” he said
“Each bundle is designed to let developers of security and safety critical systems, including certifiable systems, take advantage of powerful workflows and techniques such as containers and sensor fusion, easily connect to cloud services, and to scale and adapt intelligently to changing market requirements,” said Pavan Singh, VP Product Management at Lynx.
The bundles are tailored for applications such as industrial robotics, drone aviation, and increasingly large and complex satellite constellations carrying payloads owned and accessed by multiple users. Each bundle lets developers create, certify, and deploy robust platforms cost-effectively.
MOSA.ic for Avionics and LYNX MOSA.ic for UAVs/Satellites support Arm and x86 processor architectures. Both include LynxOS-178, Lynx’s proven DO-178 certified operating system, the LynxSecure separation kernel hypervisor, Linux, a rich set of tools, and support for the SR-IOV extension to the PCIe specification.
Future code drops will further extend capabilities including guest operating systems, IoT connectivity, and processor architectures.
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