Your role
RISC-V (riscv.org) is an open-source RISC ISA that is fast gaining traction in both academia and industry.
Hex Five Multizone SDK (hex-five.com) is a micro-kernel operating system that has been developed specifically for RISC-V to support applications that are safety- and/or security-critical.
It is to be expected that RISC-V with Hex Five or some similar micro-kernel running on it is to become a major platform in its intended domains such as, for example, the Internet of Things.
For this reason, there is considerable academic and industrial interest in RISC-V related developments also in Sweden.
Hex Five is a closed-source product yet it has an open-source API. Its creators encourage independent efforts at implementing the API.
The objective of the ex-jobb consists of carrying out just such an independent implementation of the Hex Five API. It would be invaluable if such an implementation existed as safety- and security-critical applications greatly profit from this kind of redundancy.
The ex-jobb (30 Hp) offers a perfect opportunity to prove and develop implementation skills in an exciting new domain that is not yet covered by all kinds of previous work. The Hex Five API is very small and can be studied here; RISC-V itself is a relatively small architecture to begin with. Hex Five is written in assembler, consisting of fewer than 2000 assembler instructions.
The topic of the ex-jobb consists of implementing as much functionality as possible in C (or even in C++ if that turns out to be a sensible thing to do). Assembler should be used as little as possible. Besides redundancy, a Hex Five
implementation in C would possess further important advantages in terms of it (hopefully) being more self-documenting, easier to maintain and modify, and others.
The Master Thesis would be carried out in close collaboration with co-workers at Saab. The person working on it would be warmly welcome to work on Saab premises if desired.
This position requires that you will be approved in a security screening in accordance with the Swedish Protective Security Act.
Interested? Please contact Jaana Nyfjord (jaana.nyfjord@saabgroup.com) who is the one at Saab who is responsible for the project.
