ARINC-653 Inter-partition communications and the ravenscar profile

The ARINC-653 standard is often used to build mixed-criticality systems, using a partitioned architecture. Inter-partition communication is carried out by means of a message-passing mechanism based on ports. The standard includes an API for Ada, but the implementation semantics of operation ports is not fully defined. Furthermore, the API was defined for the Ada 95 standard, and therefore does not take into account the enhancements to the real-time features of the language that have been incorporated in the 2005 and 2013 standards, most notably the Ravenscar profile. This paper is aimed at clarifying the implementation of ARINC communication ports in Ada and the Ravenscar profile. ARINC communication ports are analysed, and their compatibility with the Ravenscar profile is assessed. A new API that can be used with the profile is defined, and a pilot implementation is introduced.