Software-based Memory Protection on OSEK/VDX- The KESO Multi-JVM

Electronic support functions pose the current major area of innovation in the automotive environment. The number of ECUs has reached an upper boundary with about 80 ECUs deployed in a well-equipped car. The industry aims at consolidating the number of ECUs by shifting from a federated architecture to an integrated architecture. The integration of multiple applications on an ECU raises the need for isolation mechanisms that allow for a safe coexistance. The embedded Multi-JVM KESO is a purely software-based approach to provide memory protection through the use of the type-safe Java language along with other isolation machanisms. KESO is based on an OSEK/VDX operating system, the defacto standard in the automotive industry, and compiles Java code to C-Code ahead-of-time, which allows the use of existing compiler and analyzing tools. This work covers the Java interface to the OSEK/VDX system services and a heap management strategy featuring low-latency incremental garbage collection, but also gives a general KESO overview.