Uncrewed Systems Technology 044 l Xer Technolgies X12 and X8 l Lidar sensors l Stan UGV l USVs insight l AUVSI Xponential 2022 l Cobra Aero A99H l Accession Class USV l Connectors I Oceanology International 2022

10 Platform one The Khronos Group has released a standard for safety-critical GPU graphics and computing (writes Nick Flaherty). The group has already developed a range of standards for graphics used by key developers such as Nvidia, but the Vulkan Safety-Critical (SC) 1.0 API Specification is designed to support safety-critical industries that use the latest graphics and AI processors. It has also developed an open source Conformance Test Suite, and multiple vendors have developed Vulkan SC 1.0 implementations. The API is aimed at automotive developers developing ISO 26262 ASIL D high-reliability systems as well as RTCA DO-178C Level A/EASA ED-12C Level A avionics systems. To streamline system-level safety- critical certifications, system components such as acceleration APIs should be streamlined as far as possible to reduce documentation and testing surface area, have deterministic behaviour and predictable execution times to simplify design and testing, and implement robust and unambiguous fault-handling. The Vulkan SC 1.0 specification uses the Vulkan 1.2 API to meet these requirements, decoupling software and hardware development for easier integration of new hardware components and software reusability across platforms and system generations. Various GPU IP and chip providers are supporting the standard, including ARM and Imagination Technologies in the UK and Nvidia in the US, which is using the standard in its Drive driverless car software. “Functional safety is paramount for any autonomous system deployed in vehicles, robots, factories and beyond,” said Tom Conway, senior director of product management, automotive and IoT line of business at ARM. “Through our partnership with CoreAVI and the Khronos Group, we’re addressing the complex requirements of autonomous use-cases using ARM’s safety-capable GPU, the Mali-G78AE, and ISO 26262-certified Vulkan SC drivers, Mali-G78AE VKCore. “The release of Vulkan SC 1.0 marks an important milestone in enabling developers to use the full capabilities of safety-capable Mali GPUs and create robust code for safety-critical use cases. Steve Viggers, chair of the CoreAVI and Vulkan SC working group, said, “Vulkan SC 1.0 enables detailed design and control of device scheduling, synchronisation and resource management for developing the next generation of safety-critical graphics and computing applications targeting modern GPUs.” Vulkan SC removes functionality from Vulkan that is not needed for safety-critical markets, increasing the robustness of the specification by eliminating ignored parameters and undefined behaviours, and enables enhanced detection, reporting and correction of runtime faults. Vulkan SC 1.0 is also aligned with the MISRA C automotive software development guidelines. It also increases determinism and reduces application size by shifting preparation of the runtime application environment, either offline or into application set-up, as much as possible. This includes offline compilation of graphics pipelines that define how the GPU processes data, together with static memory allocation, that together enable detailed GPU control that can be rigorously specified and tested. All the Vulkan SC pipelines are compiled offline and can be statically analysed to understand the data flow and the amount of memory used by the pipeline processing. The memory needed for pipeline execution can then be reserved at device creation time to minimise memory usage and avoid the need for runtime memory allocation. Safety-critical standard Hardware safety June/July 2022 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The offline pipeline for compiling safety-critical GPU graphics