A reliability testing framework for the QNX neutrino real-time operating system

QNX Neutrino是一款在嵌入式系统领域非常流行的实时操作系统（RTOS），它被广泛应用于从医疗系统到汽车系统等许多安全关键领域。由于QNX Neutrino在各种应用中的使用越来越多，随着物联网（IoT）的兴起，预计提供额外的措施来确保更高的可靠性，以避免可能导致致命后果的故障。验证RTOS的可靠性被认为是最具挑战性的任务之一。与实时操作系统的有效性相关的一些活动是：（1）形式化建模和证明属性;（2）自动测试操作系统;（3）运行时监控。形式化建模被证明是一种有效的方法，但具有验证范围和覆盖范围的限制。自动测试和运行时监控可以有效地提高鲁棒性，但这两种方法的共同挑战是需要验证用于验证的技术。为此，本项目的目标是设计和实施一个可靠性测试框架，该框架具有验证QNX Neutrino实时操作系统可靠性的技术，并对QNX Neutrino实时操作系统进行增值增强。我们计划使用故障注入方法故意在系统中引入故障，以检查它是否能够处理后果并验证鲁棒性。QNX Neutrino实时操作系统有望在物联网领域发挥关键作用，为自动驾驶汽车、航空电子设备、医疗设备和现代核操作软件等新兴市场创造巨大商机。该合作研发项目将为BlackBerry QNX Netruino RTOS提供解决方案，并培训高素质的人才，以满足上述新兴市场对使用实时操作系统的熟练劳动力日益增长的需求。

QNX Neutrino is a real-time operating system (RTOS) that is widely popular in the embedded systems domain, and it's being used in many safety-critical domains ranging from medical systems to automotive systems. Due to the increasing use of QNX Neutrino in a variety of applications and with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT), providing additional measures to ensure higher reliability is anticipated to avoid failures that may cause fatal consequences. Validating the reliability of a RTOS is considered as one of the most challenging tasks. Some activities associated with the validity of a real-time operating system are: (1) formal modeling and proving the properties; (2) automatically test operating systems; and (3) runtime monitoring. Formal modeling is proven to be an effective approach but has the limitations of verification scopes and coverage. Automatic testing and runtime monitoring can effectively increase the robustness but a common challenge in both of these approaches is the need to validate the techniques used for verification. To this end, the objective of this project is to design and implement a reliability testing framework featuring techniques to validate the reliability with value-added enhancements to the QNX Neutrino RTOS. We plan to use a fault injection method to deliberately introduce faults in the system to check whether it can handle the consequences and verify robustness. Such fault injection methodologies need to be applied extensively to increase the confidence of using QNX Neutrino in safety-critical applications.The QNX Neutrino RTOS is expected to play a key role in IoT creating dramatic business opportunities in emerging markets in autonomous vehicles, avionics, medical devices, and modern software for nuclear operations. This collaborative research & development (R&D) project will provide solutions to BlackBerry QNX Netruino RTOS and train highly qualified personnel to meet the increasing demand for a skilled workforce in the above emerging markets that utilize real-time operating systems.