Contradiction of Separation through Virtualization and Inter Virtual Machine Communication in Automotive Scenarios
Tobias Holstein, Joachim Wietzke · 2015
A trend in automotive infotainment software is to create a separation of components based on different domains (e.g. Navigation, Radio, etc.). This intends to limit susceptibility to errors, simplify maintainability and to organize development based on domains. Multi-OS environments create another layer of separation through hardware/software virtualization. Using a hypervisor for virtualization allows the development of mixed critical systems. However, we see a contradiction in current architectures, which on one side aim to separate everything into virtual machines (VMs), while on the other side allow inter-VM-connectivity. In the end all applications are composited into one homogeneous UI and the previous intent of separation is disregarded.