Embedded developers need to address security and reliability concerns, said LynuxWorks at its first annual “Vision Summit” held in San Jose this week.

Much of the half-day presentation was given to presentations about the need for embedded software to address security and reliability concerns. The Summit's other main thrust was a demonstration of a pre-release version of BlueCat 5, the first product of its kind to feature a kernel from the 2.6 series, and therefore the first to benefit from the significant improvements for embedded use available in the new kernel.

Embedded apps increasingly “Mission Critical”

Mission-critical deployments of embedded systems are on the rise, according to LynuxWorks, in medical instruments, financial and security systems, telematics, avionics, and on the military's networked battlefield. Downtime is impermissible for such applications, where lives are at stake. Reliability and security become paramount.

A highly secure OS must meet stringent requirements defined by the Common Criteria, an international standard that creates common methodologies to define and certify security, the company explained. There are seven Evaluated Assurance Levels (EALs) that rank from least secure (EAL 1) to most secure (EAL 7). No OS available today rates EAL 7.

LynuxWorks believes LynxOS-178 can be certified to EAL 4, a rating that no other embedded OS provider has matched. LynuxWorks said it has developed a roadmap of innovations leading to what it hopes will be the industry's first OS certified to EAL 7. The roadmap features an innovative separation kernel, which will be designed to meet EAL 7 requirements and will isolate less secure software partitions from each other, as well as a minimal runtime kernel, which will enable some applications to actually run in the system with EAL 7 security.

For code to be certified to the EAL 7 level, it must be “formally verified, designed, and tested”, which requires exhaustive mathematical analysis — a process which necessarily limits the length of such software to a maximum of 6,000-7,000 lines of code, explained Gurjot Singh, vice president of engineering at LynuxWorks. For this reason, standard operating systems such as Linux cannot be made to meet EAL 7. It is for this reason that a separation kernel, as well as a limited functionality minimal runtime kernel, will need to be created, he said.

City of San Jose renames company's street “Embedded Way”

The company's 15-year anniversary was noted by the City of San Jose, where LynuxWorks is headquartered. During an informal ceremony with city officials, the street name was changed from Branham Lane East to Embedded Way.

Dr. Inder Singh, chairman and CEO of LynuxWorks, said, “LynuxWorks is the only company to offer both royalty-free Linux embedded operating systems via our BlueCat Linux family along with robust, hard real-time proprietary solutions with our LynxOS family. These products are all fully compatible with one another so a customer can easily grow from one to the next, as their needs evolve.”

 
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