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Green Hills Software and Excelfore Bring Production-Ready eSync OTA and Data Services to Software-Defined Vehicles

Excelfore eSync OTA software platform integrated and optimized with Green Hills safe and secure INTEGRITY real-time operating system

LAS VEGAS — January 5, 2022 — CES 2022, Booth #6359 — Green Hills Software, the worldwide leader in embedded safety and security, today announced the availability of its eSync-compliant over-the-air (OTA) solution for secure and flexible OTA software delivery and data services for automotive electronic systems. The INTEGRITY^® real-time operating system from Green Hills Software safely and securely runs and protects the eSync OTA software client platform from Excelfore, an innovator in connected car technologies. The combined software platform, which runs on the latest automotive processors, enables OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to reduce the time, cost, and complexity of developing and deploying secure and flexible vehicle-to-cloud strategies for the next-generation of connected vehicles.

As vehicles become more connected and as their software grows in complexity and responsibility, OEMs are looking to OTA cloud connectivity to update software services and firmware, access vehicle diagnostics, and monetize data services. The benefits to OEMs will be extensive, helping them to avoid costly and inconvenient vehicle recalls, allowing them to enable new software features to realize future revenue opportunities, and providing them with a way to address required bug fixes after start-of-production.

While OTA software update technology may appear sufficient for today’s connected vehicles, the safety and security ramifications for vehicle software poses a unique and crucial challenge for OEMs. Another challenge is that vehicle ECUs are embedded in complex vehicle architectures of heterogenous ECUs on multiple networks from diverse suppliers. To address these evolving and growing challenges, OEMs and their partners can now rely on the eSync standards-based OTA solution integrated on Green Hills production-proven operating systems.

eSync is a multi-company standardized specification from the eSync Alliance (www.esyncalliance.org) that defines a software platform and secure bi-directional data pipeline between the cloud and vehicle ECUs. eSync can deliver and update software and firmware while collecting real-time operational data used in various ECUs, sensors and actuators for IVIs, domain and zonal controllers, vehicle gateways, and telematics.

The INTEGRITY real-time operating system (RTOS) safely and securely runs and protects the Excelfore eSync OTA software, enabling the rich set of eSync functions connected to the OEM’s preferred cloud platform. The INTEGRITY microkernel is pre-certified to ISO 26262 ASIL D and has adopted the ISO 21434 automotive cybersecurity standard, and successfully powers hundreds of millions of critical systems today. INTEGRITY securely separates critical software components, such as the eSync OTA functions, while guaranteeing the processor resources needed for timely and correct execution, even when faced with malicious or unintended events.

Shrikant Acharya, CTO at Excelfore, said: “Green Hills Software has set the standard in the automotive industry for delivering failsafe, stable, and secure solutions, with the high performance required for connected cars. By combining the INTEGRITY RTOS with the Excelfore eSync OTA platform, we have taken another important step towards making secure OTA updates ubiquitous in today’s vehicles.”

The Excelfore eSync platform is compliant with eSync Alliance specifications. It has been proven on a variety of public and private clouds and can reach the full range of in-vehicle electronics. The Green Hills INTEGRITY platform with eSync includes several advanced and optimized capabilities:

• Feature-rich OTA capabilities include custom policies, delta compression, and end-to-end security for software delivery and updates.
• The eSync Server is available on Amazon AWS, Baidu, Microsoft Azure, and Google GCP, and is portable to private clouds.
• The eSync Client, protected by INTEGRITY, securely communicates with the eSync Server, and establishes secure communications with eSync Agents. It receives updates from the Server, verifies them, and transfers them over Ethernet, CAN, and other in-vehicle networks and busses, to the Agents within the vehicle. The eSync Client also orchestrates a variety of services to ensure compliance with OTA policies.
• eSync Agents, the primary endpoints for OTA updates, perform the installation of software, firmware, and configuration files to their edge devices. eSync Agents can also gather diagnostic data from edge devices.
• Advanced C and C++ development tools from the MULTI^® IDE, qualified for the development of ASIL D applications, bring advanced features and deep visibility into software to help find and fix bugs faster than ever before.

Availability
The INTEGRITY-based eSync platform from Excelfore and Green Hills Software is available to early-access customers today for the NXP S32G vehicle networking processor and is portable to other leading automotive processors.

About Green Hills Software

Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the worldwide leader in embedded safety and security. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178 RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL 6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at https://www.ghs.com.

Green Hills, the Green Hills logo, MULTI and INTEGRITY are trademarks or registered trademarks of Green Hills Software in the U.S. and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.