Robust Multicore Middleware

Emerging radiation-hardened and commercial space-capable processors are leveraging general-purpose multicore and niche-application cores to satisfy the ever increasing onboard processing demands required by planned NASA missions. Such architectures can provide increased processing bandwidth and power efficiency for onboard processing applications. However, these advantages come at the cost of increased hardware and software complexity and decreased fault tolerance in the case of commercial technology. As software development is a major cost driver for missions, this increased complexity has the potential to significantly increase cost for future missions. In addition, maintaining mission assurance and fault tolerance is critical. To address these risks, Troxel Aerospace Industries, Inc. (Troxel Aerospace) proposes to continue develop and commercialize a robust middleware management technology for spacecraft heterogeneous multicore processing systems. The middleware technology will enable a fault tolerant computing environment that is portable to different processors and is largely transparent to mission applications executing upon the middleware to provide a standardized, resource-aware, fault tolerant interface for configuration management and heterogeneous resource allocation. This Phase II will include developing the remainder of the middleware, executing a representative application using it across two or three different processor architectures, undertaking a heavy-ion radiation test campaign to quantify its effectiveness in a relevant mission environment, and continuing the commercialization activities begun in Phase I.