TRANGO Virtual Processors supports ARMv6 in Its Hypervisor Products

TRANGO Virtual Processors, a provider of embedded virtualization IP, has announced the support for ARMv6 architecture in its hypervisor product line. The TRANGO Hypervisor enables an MMU-enabled ARM11 family processor to run securely and simultaneously up to 256 virtual processors. Each virtual processor can execute its own Operating System (Windows CE or Linux ), a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), or a stand-alone application or driver.

TRANGO Multiple Virtual Processors Architecture

Pierre Coulombeau, TRANGO Virtual Processors, said:

The ARMv6 architecture offers advanced security extensions through the TrustZone technology, higher performance and scalability for our customers…

Our hypervisor solutions benefit greatly from the architecture and microarchitecture enhancements embodied in the ARM1136J(F)-S, ARM1156T2(F)-S and ARM1176JZ(F)-S CPU cores, while carrying forward a lot of the improvements already deployed in our hypervisor for the ARMv5 architecture. Furthermore, with the addition of TrustZone technology in the ARM1176JZ(F)-S processor coupled with the availability of TrustZone Software, ARM has introduced a good security framework enabling a system-wide and hardware isolated security execution environment that TRANGO plans to leverage and compliment…

One of the benefits of the TRANGO virtualization solution is the ability to isolate proprietary or sensitive code and data from the Linux GPL license constraints. In particular, the upcoming version 3 license is raising significant concerns for OEMs who have invested heavily in the open source OS. Running GPL-based and proprietary-based code on top of different virtual processors, the TRANGO Hypervisor enables the separation of features, providers and their license constraints; as if they were running on different physical processors (but at the cost of a single core).

Another major value-add is the ability to run some OS in parallel with business-critical applications and services, such as DRM, secure update or e-commerce, fully isolated and fully protected against hardware and software attacks.

Finally, customers can leverage the enhanced performance of the ARMv6 CPU cores by integrating functions traditionally executed elsewhere into one single CPU or, looking ahead, a potential CPU cluster.

About Virtualization

Virtualization is the ability to run multiple Execution Environment on a single hardware platform. An Execution Environment can be an Operating System (OS) and its applications, a Real-time operating system (RTOS) or a stand-alone application. In the virtualization field, an Execution Environment is called Virtual Machine. OS, RTOS or applications hosted in the Virtual Machine are called Guest OS.

Benefits of Virtualization

• Cost reduction
  Bill of Material is highly optimized and reduced thanks to the use and share of a single single hardware between different software functions, like a mobile phone telecom stack and the application/MMI software. TRANGO hypervisor enables to share securely a single or multi-processor platform, and optimize the load balancing of resources between each software sub-systems.
• New product features
  The integration of Rich OS such as Linux or WindowsCE into a platform makes possible numerous of new applications to be integrated with the help of associated wide developpers communities.
  Products designed with TRANGO hypervisor are scalable and extensible to new features. TRANGO products support hot and secure update policies, enabling to update or upgrade a product with new features in the field or reusing the same platform for a new generation.
  TRANGO Virtual Processors has also established strong partnership with third-party vendors, providing trusted services on top of TRANGO architecture: DRM, Broadcast, Secure Update, Device Management, Payment, Crypto, etc
• Faster Time to Market
  TRANGO hypervisor enables to reduce porting effort from existing to next generation product, and improve portability of legacy software and drivers. Virtualization architecture could also be used to have the same peripheral drivers and proprietary firmware for all supported operating systems (Linux, Windows CE, Symbian, etc.).

The ARMv6 architecture-based TRANGO Hypervisor products will be available for shipment to customers starting in July 2007

The company will demonstrate its products the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers’ Conference in Berlin (June 25 - 26, 2007).

Further reading: TRANGO Virtual Processors’ Hypervisor fo ARM