Master thesis: VMs vs containers for sandboxing of user provided software in embedded system

Background

The ACU6 Pro OH product allows the car or equipment manufacturer to write their own application software and run it as part of their final system. For security and reliability reasons the customer application and the base system written by Actia is isolated in two different virtual machines (VMs).

VMs are a functional and secure way of separation but have high overhead which might be a problem in an embedded system where CPU and RAM resources are limited. In the last few years containerization has been improved a lot in the context of cloud and server-side execution but we would like to investigate its use in an embedded system.

Scope

We see this as a two-part thesis. The first part would entail a review of previously performed work in the area and a theoretical investigation of the trade-offs and expected behavior and performance of the system. Then a second part would be to validate these theoretical findings by implementing a PoC in a real system and then performing measurements and analysis.

Challenges

Virtualization and containerization are both very complex techniques, or rather collections of techniques where different implementations have different sets of features and specification details, which means that evaluating and comparing them becomes challenging. Also, the constraints of a embedded system is very different from those of say a server which means that a lot of existing work in the area might not be relevant, i.e. this thesis will have to break new ground.

Benefits of working with us

• Engage in cutting-edge automotive technology development.
• Collaborate in a dynamic and innovative team environment.
• Contribute to significant advancements in automotive system reliability.

Ideal candidates should be enrolled in a university program, preferably Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics or similar.

The ideal candidate should also have experience from: Linux and embedded systems

We are also looking for these personal traits: easy going, friendly, open minded, tech-entusiastic and with a meticulously mindset.