Demo abstract: Atacama — An open research platform for mixed-criticality communication in ethernet

Abstract

Ethernet is widely recognized as an attractive networking technology for modern distributed real-time systems. However, standard Ethernet components require specific modifications and hardware support to provide strict latency guarantees necessary for safety-critical applications. Although this is a well-stated fact, the design of hardware components for real-time communication remains mostly unexplored. This becomes evident from the few solutions reporting prototypes and experimental validation, which hinders the consolidation of Ethernet in real-world distributed applications. This demonstration introduces Atacama, a framework for mixed-criticality communication on multi-hop Ethernet networks. Atacama is the first solution providing an open-source FPGA-based hardware implementation to enable rapid prototyping and experimental validation. Details about the synthesizable modules and design tools are available for researchers to modify and build upon. The demonstration will provide an overview of the design and functional principles of the framework, and show experimental evidence of the achieved timing properties using implemented prototypes.