Hypervisor integrates general purpose and real time operating systems
At Embedded World digital this week, eSOL will be showcasing its eMCOS hypervisor which allows both real time and general purpose operating systems can run concurrently on a single hardware platform.
The two OS run concurrently, with full time and space isolation provided inside a mixed-criticality system. The eMCOS hypervisor enables the implementation of the open standard Virtio (Virtual I/O) device interface, for sharing physical or virtual resources. The virtualisation standard allows for a guest device to be aware it is running in a virtual mode and co-operate with the hypervisor.
To support software development, the hypervisor implements support for common Virtio device interfaces to allow guest OS to access shared devices. It is therefore possible to reuse Linux applications code and deploy a Linux image without modifications, other than the integrator-level device tree, to specify both physical and virtual devices.
“The eMCOS hypervisor also supports sharing the physical devices using ‘bridges’ running as POSIX real-time applications directly on the Hypervisor native environment, without the overhead of a controlling guest OS,” explains Rolland Dudemaine, vice president of engineering at eSOL Europe. “These bridges can act as simple software-defined routers, but are also an ideal location to implement specific functionalities as encryption, an intrusion-detection-system, and/or rate limiting. If needed, physical devices can be directly passed to the guest OS for best reuse of existing device drivers without sharing capability,” he says.
eSOL was founded in 1975. The company specialises in embedded systems and edge computing, providing scalable software and professional services, centred around its patented eMCOS multi-kernel RTOS. Its portfolio is used worldwide in demanding embedded application fields which conform to stringent quality, safety and security standards, including automotive systems as well as industrial equipment, satellites, medical and digital consumer electronics.
In addition to the research and development of its products, and joint research with major manufacturers and universities, eSOL is actively engaged in AutoSAR, Autoware, the open source software built on ROS/ROS 2 for autonomous driving, and multi/many-core technology standardisation activities.
eSOL will be at Embedded World Digital 1-5 March 2021: www.esol.com/event/event_32.html
