Embedded operating system firm LynuxWorks has joined the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium's (EEMBC's) hypervisor sub-committee.
"A number of key factors are contributing to the increasing adoption of embedded hypervisor technology, such as running legacy code and operating systems, migration to multi-core chips and the need for security separation of applications" said Arun Subbarao, v-p engineering at LynuxWorks.
"However, real-time performance and determinism is still one of the top factors in the selection of hypervisors, and our engineers will be using their knowledge to help in the creation of a hypervisor benchmark suite alongside other EEMBC members."
Subbarao has joined the sub-committee at its chairman.
The benchmarks will measure the effects of hypervisors, also known as virtual machine managers, on performance, code size, and energy consumption in embedded systems.
A hypervisor is a program that allows multiple operating systems or execution environments to run simultaneously on a single processor.
In a multi-core environment, a hypervisor can also distribute the operating systems and applications across multiple cores.
"The benefits of using a hypervisor as a virtualisation platform include better load balancing and lower power consumption by virtue of migrating processes dynamically to underutilised cores, as well as greater up-time through background firmware updates and redundant operating system imaging," claimed LynuxWorks.
The firm makes a distinction between the 'full virtualisation' required for closed operating systems such as Windows, and para-virtualisation where calls from a hosted operating system can be modified - from, for example, open operating systems such as Linux.
With full virtualisation, the operating system believes it is the only operating system on the hardware and believes it has full access to all system hardware.
In this case, the hardware needs to be aware of virtualisation - increasingly Intel processors include virtualisation hardware - and call the hypervisor when any hosted operating system attempts to access privileged resources.
"The hardware needs virtualisation support," said LynuxWorks product marketing manager Stuart Fisher. "A hypervisor only degrades [virtualised operating system] performance by around 5%, which will reduce as virtualisation technology improves."
With para-virtualisation, operating systems are modified not to access privileged resources, but to request them through the hypervisor.
In addition to LynuxWorks, EEMBC member companies that have participated in the hypervisor sub-committee include AMD, ARM, Freescale, Green Hills, IBM, Intel, Marvell, MIPS Technologies, Nokia Siemens Networks and VMware.
See also: LynxSecure aims for Windows and Solaris virtualisation in 2009