Wind River, an Aptiv company and global specialist in mission critical software for the intelligent Edge, has joined the CHERI Alliance, a group championing the global adoption of the Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI) security technology.
CHERI architecture is designed to enhance system security through memory protection and access permissions which can combat security issues such as memory corruption and unauthorised code execution. Wind River’s work with the Alliance aims to help the ecosystem develop more secure products and drive cybersecurity innovation by reducing memory vulnerabilities.
“Advances like CHERI mark an important shift toward hardware-enforced security as a foundation for next-generation systems. By addressing memory safety at the architectural level, CHERI has the potential to improve resilience across critical infrastructure and intelligent Edge deployments,” said Paul Miller, CTO, Intelligent Systems, Software and Services, Aptiv. “Wind River is excited to collaborate with the CHERI Alliance and contribute our expertise in real-time operating systems and virtualisation, leveraging VxWorks and the Helix Virtualisation Platform to help operationalise CHERI in production environments.”
“The CHERI Alliance is bringing the ecosystem together to collaborate and make it easier for the industry to design more secure products,” said Mike Eftimakis, Founding Director of the CHERI Alliance. “We are excited to welcome Wind River to the CHERI Alliance. Their expertise and collaboration with our community will be a significant boost to our mission to accelerate CHERI adoption.”
Expanding on its ongoing work to innovate on CHERI, Wind River was recently awarded a contract as part of a strategic effort from Innovate UK and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for the adoption and diffusion of CHERI technology. Wind River will be working to port and extend the VxWorks Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) and Wind River Helix Virtualisation Platform (Helix Platform) to leverage the CHERI architecture on RISC-V, enhancing system security and reliability for safety-critical and embedded applications. This project marks a significant step forward in developing secure and scalable RTOSes on RISC-V architecture.
“Working with an industry leader like Wind River will help companies accelerate innovation using industry-grade CHERI-enabled software for a new class of secure RISC-V embedded devices,” said Georgios Papadakis, Senior Innovation Lead, Secure and Resilient Growth Directorate, Innovate UK. “Transitioning Wind River platforms to CHERI RISC-V combines the power of a proven RTOS like VxWorks that has extensive safety certifications with the strengthened digital security and resilience of CHERI technology.”
Wind River had previously completed the architecture ports of VxWorks and Helix Platform to support CHERI on the Armv8 based Morello hardware. With Wind River now enabling CHERI on RISC-V, this further reinforces Wind River’s leadership in architectural coverage for a commercial RTOS.
Market-leading VxWorks is the industry’s most trusted and widely deployed RTOS for mission-critical systems that must be safe and secure. Helix Platform is a hypervisor solution that enables engineering teams to consolidate multiple systems onto a single high-performance embedded system, and streamlines safety certification, reduces project risk, and accelerates time-to-market.
