A Secure Distributed Computing Middleware for the seL4 Ecosystem

Real-Time Innovations, Inc. (RTI) proposes to continue our research and development of a novel, open, high-assurance communications framework based on the seL4 secure microkernel and the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS) messaging middleware.  In this effort we will primarily focus on the design, development and testing of 2-3 reference architectures for trusted, verified, safety-critical distributed systems.  Our goal is to advance our understanding of practical application architectures, providing important results and guidance to the seL4 community. RTI’s overall goal continues to be the development and contribution of an open-source, secure version, of our commercial product, and a set of supporting tools to the seL4 developer community to help foster adoption of this new technology and the underlying seL4 kernel.  A substantial hurdle to the adoption of seL4 is the lack of both a stable version of the microkernel as well as support for distributed communications.  The seL4 Center of Excellence (CoE), funded in part by DARPA, is focused on the development of a stable distribution for US DoD adopters. In parallel, RTI continues to advance the goal to provide an integrated, mature, and standards-based solution for distributed communications.