ELISA Project Momentum Continues

Community growth and engagement, coupled with new member support, offers additional approaches for assessing safety in applications using Linux.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18, 2020 – As ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) nears its year and a half anniversary, the project continues to hit key milestones showing its value for delivering foundational support for safety-critical applications.   ELISA, formed in February 2019 and a hosted project of the Linux Foundation, aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems whose failure could result in loss of human life, significant property damage, or environmental damage. 

As Linux continues to be a key component in safety applications, autonomous vehicles, medical devices, and even rockets, ELISA will make it easier for companies to build and expand these safety-critical systems. As a show of support for this business-critical initiative, several new members have joined the ELISA project. New members include Premier Member Intel/Mobileye, General Members ADIT, Elektrobit, Mentor, SiFive, Suzuki, Wind River and Associate Members Automotive Grade Linux and Technical University of Applied Sciences Regensburg. 

“Since forming ELISA, we’ve had incredible support from members and the community. As we near 18 months as a project, we’ve agreed on a strategy for partitioning the problem into manageable pieces, and have working groups making progress towards approaches to bridge between the linux and safety standards communities and are looking forward to continuing the path we’ve been on,” said Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Programs, The Linux Foundation. “We are encouraged by broad participation, as demonstrated by our nine new members, including Intel, as well as very active working groups. These kinds of activities are indicators of achieving the critical mass needed to establish a widely discussed and accepted methodology.”

“Intel and Mobileye see the Linux Operating system as an important player in the functional safety software ecosystem,” said Simone Fabris, ELISA Governing Board member and senior director of system safety at Mobileye, an Intel Company.  “The impact and skills of the open source community will be harnessed through the ELISA project to increase the safety integrity of future embedded systems while, at the same time, contributing to a better quality, reduction of development costs and speed up the delivery of complex functional safety systems across multiple industry domains including autonomous driving and avionics.”

“Linux has evolved ever since its inception to run on devices small and large while serving the needs of a wide spectrum of technology, from an elevator to a supercomputer,” said Shuah Khan, ELISA Technical Steering Committee Member and Linux Foundation Fellow. “Each of these evolutions requires identifying what is needed and what is missing in the existing code base and enhancing existing features and adding new ones. ELISA project’s mission is to evolve Linux to serve an emerging and important safety-critical space that spans medical devices, civil infrastructure, caregiving robots, automotives, and others.”

In addition to incredible member growth, ELISA has established several work groups to further the crucial work of the cross-industry project and its work toward advancing open source in safety-critical systems. These groups include Kernel Development Process,  Safety Architecture, Medical Devices and is now forming an Automotive working group.

Community members will have the chance to learn more about this important work during the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit North America where Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Programs, The Linux Foundation, is set to give a keynote speech, “Keynote: Open Source in Safety Critical Applications: The End Game.” For the first time, this event will also include an Open Source Dependability track. See the full schedule for Open Source Summit North America taking place virtually from June 29, 2020 to July 2, 2020.

In addition, ELISA will continue to hold regular workshops to discuss approaches to solving the missing pieces and better tooling. Listen to previous workshops and get notified of upcoming events at https://elisa.tech/news/.

New Member Quotes

ADIT, a joint venture of Robert Bosch GmbH and DENSO Corporation

“Having followed ELISA since May 2019 and having participated in all workshops so far, I am excited to see the recent increase of interest in the field of Automotive and Linux; the core competence of ADIT. The enthusiastic collaboration between functional safety participants combined with the recent excellent contributions from Linux experts are adding the value and momentum needed to enable Linux in safety applications and to make ELISA a success story”, said Philipp Ahmann, manager at ADIT, a joint venture of Robert Bosch GmbH and DENSO Corporation.

Automotive Grade Linux 

“Functional safety is an increasingly important topic for Automotive Grade Linux as we expand into Instrument Cluster and eventually into Autonomous Vehicle solutions”, said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux at the Linux Foundation. “With the support of eleven car manufacturers and over 150 companies, we look forward to collaborating with ELISA Project and help drive the requirements from an automotive perspective.”

Elektrobit

“The research done in the ELISA project defines the future of enabling Linux for functional safety applications,” said Martin Schleicher, Executive Vice President Business Management, Elektrobit. “Vehicles are clearly products with special sensitivity.  EB is pleased to be part of this exciting project and looks forward to contributing its broad experience in automotive software and functional safety expertise to drive the development of mission critical automotive software.”

Mentor, a Siemens business

“The ELISA project enables Safety and Linux experts to work hand in hand on the future topics in using Linux in safety-related systems. Under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation the organizational frame allows constructive discussions about the main challenges for ‘making Linux safe,’” said Michael Ziganek, General Manager, Automotive Business Unit, Mentor, a Siemens business. “For us as Mentor, a Siemens business, being part of ELISA is an accelerator to have more customized technology offerings for our customers regarding our automotive software solutions, especially to integrate and maintain Linux in safety-critical systems.”

Technical University of Applied Sciences Regensburg

“After closely, but informally collaborating with the ELISA project via research, student and development projects, we are excited about joining ELISA as an associate member! Combining the industrial experience and insights of the world leaders in safety-critical Linux systems with the group’s research portfolio will bring marked benefits to both, industrial and academic communities, who are still too often at a distance from one another,” says Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Mauerer, head of the digitalization laboratory at OTH Regensburg.

Wind River

“Companies in all sectors will greatly benefit from the ELISA project’s goal of advancing open source to building and certifying Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems. When stakes are high and failure is not an option, it is vital for the ecosystem to work together to make safety a priority. Wind River has a long history in Linux and mission-critical systems and we look forward to contributing in order to help the ELISA project advance Linux for safety-critical applications,” said Gareth Noyes, senior vice president, Products, Wind River.

About ELISA

ELISA, Enabling Linux in Safety Applications, is an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation. ELISA’s goal is to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems whose failure could result in loss of human life, significant property damage or environmental damage. Building off the work being done by SIL2LinuxMP project and Real-Time Linux project, ELISA will make it easier for companies to build safety-critical systems such as robotic devices, medical devices, smart factories, transportation systems and autonomous driving using Linux. Founding members of ELISA include Arm, BMW Car IT GmbH, KUKA, Linutronix, and Toyota.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

# # #

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.