Following the trend already set by the avionics industry, the automotive industry also is reconsidering its current approach towards on-board electronics and starts to integrate multiple error containment units (ECUs) into a single hardware node. For this approach it is vital to ensure the complete independence of residing applications that often require different levels of safety and security. Independence is achieved by partitioning, i.e. temporal and spatial isolation, supplemented by communication mechanisms that must not impact the isolation. This approach allows the construction of composable systems that simplify the reuse of (legacy) software modules.

Furthermore, the preservation of dependability, safety and security properties of the individual modules is ensured, enabling modular validation and certification. This book approaches the safety aspects by utilizing Open Source software components, but still taking the constraints of the automotive industry into account.

The resulting implementation is able to run several independent automotive applications in parallel on the same processor, rather than requiring a single hardware node for each of them. This approach reduces the number of ECUs in the car, leading to a decrease of power consumption and weight by allowing a higher utilization of the hardware nodes. And, as another welcome advantage, it simplifies inter-node communication.