ResAuto

The automotive sector faces a growing cyber resilience problem with connected embedded electronics. The problem is exacerbated as vehicles are deployed which draw from shared software libraries delivered across diverse component supply ecosystems delivering ever more complex functionality in safety critical operations. Analysis and demonstration of the efficacy and cost of a CHERI-based solution will be of significant impact on the future design and development of automotive systems and beyond.

Using key industry data points and Morello cards RESAuto will demonstrate the potential advantages of CHERI-based solutions in complex interconnected systems which are subject to international regulatory and legal controls with conflicting through-life objectives of safety, privacy and access to data (competition law). This approach will allow numeric corroboration of potential impacts of a CHERI-based solution.

RESAuto is using an Automotive Braking System integrated with a real-time monitoring and compliance system as its exemplar for this demonstration. This test environment, including its effectiveness and cost data, is available to RESAuto and supported by the industry. Braking systems include power critical sensors, Al and approximate computing, control and actuators, complex distributed algorithms, timing criticality across technologies including CMOS and Silicon-Carbide and the ability to test quantitively across this integrated architecture. This will allow analysis of the safety goals when using DSbD artefacts, including the CHERI architecture, software toolchain support and Morello card. It will allow impact analysis, including what (business) changes to structural engineering processes are required to achieve these.

The automotive industry is the largest consumer of CMOS worldwide and its requirements vertically integrated through tiered supply chains. If the DSbD outcomes, demonstrated through use of the Morello card, can be shown to have a positive impact on the costs of achieving the legal and compliance obligations in a way that is anticipated to be more acceptable to the marketplace, then the industry is positioned to rapidly force the transformation of its CMOS supply-chain.

RESAuto members have been involved with Discribe, participating in workshops and interviews both as individual institutions and on behalf of the bodies that we represent including Automotive Electronics Innovation Network (AESIN), Techworks, NMI, UK and Global Automotive councils. If selected, AESIN will co­ organise, with Discribe, bi-annual open working groups.