RTS Hypervisor

Hardware partitioning

Partition where you can, virtualize where you have to

Virtualization enables intelligent and complete utilization of the computing power of modern microprocessors. Additional microcontroller-based hardware is gratuitous. Virtualization is also perfectly suited when different operating systems are to be used in parallel. Real-time performance requirements often hindered the use of this technology for real-time and embedded applications, though. The RTS Hypervisor enables a combination of Real-Time and General- Purpose Operating Systems (RTOS/GPOS), as well as multiple instances of the same or different OSs on one single multi-core hardware platform – highly secure and without any added latencies.

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Hard real-time with direct hardware access

When it comes to virtualization, hardware is often at least partially emulated or managed exclusively by a single host operating system. Also, processing time is rotated among the individual OSs. Both time-slicing and hardware emulation hinder the real-time performance just as much as trapping and redirecting the instructions of the processor. An RTOS requires direct hardware access. Interrupts have to be processed without delays.

The RTS Hypervisor assures hard, uncompromised, real-time performance. Unlike conventional virtualization solutions, it allows multiple OSs to run at full speed in parallel and does not interfere with time-sensitive functions. An intervening software layer for service provision to the Hypervisor or installed OSs, which prohibits native real-time processing, is not necessary.

Interrupts are routed directly to the specific OS, ›hard-wired‹ and without adding latencies to their processing. Thanks to individual interrupt assignment, special or modified device drivers can be avoided as well.

Maximum reliability with complete separation

Thanks to exclusive resource allocation, the RTS Hypervisor guarantees safe operation. It partitions a multi-core x86 system including memory and devices into individual and independent hardware platforms. Each operating system executes tasks exclusively on the assigned processing cores.

Thanks to complete, hardware-assisted separation among the OS environments, neither the OS nor its applications can interfere with other OSs running in parallel. During operation, individual processor cores or operating systems can even reboot while the remaining systems continue to be fully operational.

Real-time applications in RTOS (e. g. Blackberry QNX) running in ›Privileged Mode‹ execute with full performance and are reliably protected from GPOS and their applications (e. g. Microsoft Windows) running in ›Virtualized Mode‹.

Temporal isolation of workloads ensures correct function of real-time applications and securely protects them from concurrent workloads.

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Clear communication without limitations

For processors supporting Intel Hyper-Threading technology, logical cores can be regarded as separate logical CPUs. The logical CPUs can also be distributed among multiple processors. Thanks to a virtual network, each processor core is assigned with its own IP and MAC address. Regular protocols, like TCP/IP, OPC, or CORBA enable dedicated communication between the cores. OS applications may also exchange data via user-defi ned shared memory partitions. In addition, an event system allows applications from different operating systems to send and receive signals via named events.

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