February 27, 2012 - Real-Time Systems announced Release V3.1 of RTS Hypervisor, a software product allowing the execution of Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) in parallel to General Purpose Operating Systems like Linux or Microsoft Windows on a single hardware platform without adding latencies to an RTOS´s real-time performance. Deterministic behavior remains fully intact.
Version 3.1 of the RTS Hypervisor, facilitating deployment of multiple independent operating systems (OS) on a single Intel x86 based computer, now provides numerous unique new features. In addition to virtual network and shared memory, an Event System now allows operating systems running in the Hypervisor environment to communicate with one another by sending and receiving signals to and from user-created events. This event system has been implemented using inter-processor-interrupts (IPI) to perform deterministically if used between real-time operating systems.
For safety and seamless operation, watchdogs signal if an operating system stops working and through a newly added application programming interface users may now respond by resetting or rebooting a given operating system or take other corrective measures. In order to keep the time of each operating system synchronized, a guest OS may now act as a Master, keeping the clocks of all other operating systems running in parallel synchronized.
By partitioning processor cores, memory and I/O devices into individual, virtually independent computers, the RTS Hypervisor facilitates hardware consolidation and helps to drastically reduce overall system cost without tradeoffs. Devices or machines that currently use an embedded hardware board in parallel to a computer executing e.g. Microsoft Windows can now safely be merged in a single Intel multi-core hardware, greatly reducing design-, manufacturing- and maintenance costs. Other combinations of executing multiple of the same or different operating systems are simply a matter of available CPU cores.
Executing three instances of the same RTOS in parallel to Windows 7 on a Quad-Core processor is just one of the many possibilities the RTS Hypervisor offers.
Due to strict separation, individual operating systems can boot independently in a user defined order. Even rebooting an operating system while others keep running is possible with the RTS Hypervisor. For easy communication between operating systems, shared memory as well as a TCP/IP virtual network is available.
RTS Hypervisor currently supports all major operating systems used on x86 and all current Intel x86 platform, ranging from small Atom based board to high-end server boards.
