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Two embedded operating system vendors, Lynuxworks and Green Hills Software, have launched hypervisor software to allow different operating systems to run on a single system securely.

At the same time the Multicore Association is working on a standard to make them easier to use to run multiple operating systems on the same hardware completely securely and independently.

Lynuxworks built a fully automated software development tool to build a secure operating system, LynxOSSecure, and hypervisor system from scratch, working with the engineers who built Sun's Trusted Solaris operating system. This also automatically provides all the test suites and artefacts that are needed to certify the software.

The secure kernel has 4,000 lines of code and is designed to run on Intel's Virtualisation Technology (VT) in its latest chips such as the DuoCore that are now available for embedded systems, but using the tool can also be ported to other processors, says Robert day, marketing manager at Lynuxworks.

“It's going to be both high and medium assurance applications and for others who just want to bring in legacy operating systems,” said Day.

It only runs Windows as an emulation at the moment but the next version will include Intel's VT technology for DMA memory access for higher performance later this year, says Day.

It is also planning to extend this to a secure Integrated Development Environment including the Eclipse open source plug in technology.

Green Hills' Padded Cell hypervisor runs on a secure version of its Integrity operating system, and has been ported from the PC to embedded cards running Intel processors and the VT technology. It also adds VXWorks running at full speed as an operating system that could run alongside a full Windows implementation and Linux, all running completely independently in separate 'cells'.

This is going through certification in the US and is in the final stages of testing where hackers try to break it, says Dave Kleidermacher, CTO. “Certification could be any day now,” he said.

The Hypervisor working group just set up by the MultiCore Association is led by Trango of France which already provides hypervisor software to companies such as ARM and MIPS Technologies. It is looking to define interfaces and a message passing protocol that will allow hypervisors to be moved between different secure operating systems.