Live & Seamless Firmware Upgrade in Real Time Control Systems

High Availability systems e.g. Server power, and factory automation require uninterrupted operations, regardless of maintenance cycles or functionality upgrades. Conventionally redundant controllers are used to act as a backup in such scenarios resulting in double the cost of the hardware. This pape...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rao, Sira, Chidambaram, Baskaran, V., Prasanth, Rajakumar, Karthik, Prabhakara, Pramod, Ravichandran, Praveen, Ghotgalkar, Shailesh, Vanjari, Ashish, Mody, Mihir
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Buck converters
C2000
Costs
DC-DC buck converter
Firmware Upgrade
Hardware
High Availability
Real-time systems
Server power
Switches
Systematics
Very large scale integration
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Summary:High Availability systems e.g. Server power, and factory automation require uninterrupted operations, regardless of maintenance cycles or functionality upgrades. Conventionally redundant controllers are used to act as a backup in such scenarios resulting in double the cost of the hardware. This paper proposes a single real-time controller, that enables live firmware upgrade in such systems, reducing the cost of the hardware. The key challenge of using single controller is to perform firmware upgrade without resetting the controller to avoid halt in real-time operation. The paper proposes an approach to achieve a seamless switchover without resetting the device. It introduces novel techniques namely, hardware support for interrupt vector & function pointer swapping, compiler support to enable LFU, and optimal switchover point. The proposed solution is implemented in Real time systems using C2000™ MCU for DC-DC buck converter, and achieves less than few clocks (
ISSN:2380-6923
DOI:10.1109/VLSID57277.2023.00021