Real-time operating system (RTOS) technology with high levels of security and reliablity can now be used in embedded syetms for automotive and smart metering applications, according to Green Hills Software's chief technology officer.
David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer at Green Hills Software, says that the increasing level of embedded processor performance means it is now practical to run the company's secure RTOS on even low end microcontrollers.
Kleidermacher said the firm was working with processor firms such as Freescale, ARM, Renesas Electronics and STMicroelectronics, to support its Integrity secure RTOS on their processors.
"Our relationship with the semiconductor companies is as strong as it has ever been," said Kleidermacher.
The secure RTOS, which was originally developed for high reliability system applications in aerospace and control systems, is now being ported to a range of embedded processors.
"The need for software security is rippling all the way down embedded systems from the top," ARM's chief technology officer, Mike Muller told Electronics Weekly.
As a result Kleidermacher expects the implementation of the RTOS to accelerate in new areas such as automotive, smart metering, but also smartphones and even PCs.
"We are seeing a lot of interest from the Android smartphone space," said Kleidermacher.
In automotive it is the high reliability elements which are important to driver assistance systems. In smart metering and mobile phones it is the software security features which are interesting designers.
According to Kleidermacher, another important development was when Intel became interested in the secure RTOS to run on its reference platforms for point-of-sale terminals.
Green Hills also intends to support Intel's second generation Core processor famility with the Integrity RTOS and its secure virtualisation technology.
The RTOS has also been ported to Freescale's QorIQ processors, and ARM-based processors from Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics.
ARM has its own partitioning software called TrustZone, and Green Hills has been working with ARM to support software partitioning between secure and real-time critical applications running on its Integrity RTOS and a general purpose OS such as Windows or Android, running on the same processor.
This opens up the possibility of implementing this type of secure software for financial transactions on mobile phones.
Windows cannot be that secure, so the only way is to run it on an RTOS and so keep the secure applications separate and outside the Windows OS.
This requires increased processing power, but with the latest Intel and ARM cores this will soon be practical for PCs and smartphones, reckoned Kleidermacher.
"Both Intel and ARM are very interested in the idea," said Kleidermacher.
The smaller version of the Green Hills RTOS has already been ported to Cortex-M4 based processors from Freescale.