In the frame of the SAVOIR activities, a workshop was organized in January 2012 to present to the space community the progress and issues related to the group of activities referenced under the name “IMA for Space”.

The workshop recognized that the topic had a perimeter going beyond only the time and space partitioning software aspects, and suggested it be tackled at avionics level, for example under the auspice of Savoir as a SAG sub group.
The SAVOIR Advisory Group has, in his meeting of 18 April 2012, confirmed the need to spawn a specific subgroup on Integrated Modular Avionics to elaborate an avionics architecture to support Time and Space Partitioning (TSP) at avionics level.

The WG elaborates the integrated modular avionics architecture and related interfaces as to allow the implementation of interface standards and software and hardware building blocks to fulfil the objectives of the SAVOIR initiative, namely to progress towards standardisation in the avionics development.
The mandate of the WG also covers security for its impact on the avionics architecture, in particular in view of using security oriented separation kernels for dual secure/non-secure use .
The group analyses the impact of the concept of IMA on the overall current reference architecture (hardware, software and communication). Modifications to the hardware architecture is identified to improve compatibility with time and space partitioning, primarily taking into account the computer architecture (mono-processor, multi-core, distributed) and communication architecture (synchronous and asynchronous networks); and secondarily the equipment architecture (sensor, actuator, mass memory).
In particular the objective for the WG is to achieve the definition of a complete concept to fully support time and space partitioning. If necessary, open interface standards are produced with the purpose of specifying hardware and software building blocks that can be developed, qualified and composed into avionics components with a minimum of re-engineering effort, providing a maximum of reliability and performance, and which are simple to use and to implement.

The set of avionics components to be considered for the IMA architecture include the on-board computer, the payload computer, data concentrators (e.g. Remote Terminal Units or Remote Interface Units), separation kernel, abstraction layer and associated middleware (including system and privileged partitions), para-virtualised guest operating systems, and supporting toolsets.

The WG ensures that the IMA software architecture is compatible with the SAVOIR software reference architecture. A potential solution is illustrated in the following diagram: