“This content was initially posted 24 October 2013 on blogs.arm.com”
To say Green Hills is excited about the ARMv8-R architecture would be a large understatement. We've been consulting with ARM on this architecture, literally, for years. This collaboration demonstrates not only ARM's long-ranged vision but also its commitment to incorporating ecosystem feedback to make a better product. All too often, CPU manufacturers design in a vacuum, and while they have incredibly talented engineering teams that know best how to optimize CPU cycles, bus speeds, and battery life, they can't possibly know all the impacts and opportunities associated with third party operating systems, hypervisors, and development tools. Bravo, ARM.
But what we're most excited about is the architecture itself. Until the ARMv8-R architecture, designers of real-time electronics would need to make a decision between microcontrollers, which lack 'high-end' memory protection capabilities, and applications processors, which lack hard real-time and industrial safety hardware characteristics. So if a design absolutely needed the features of a microcontroller, it would be forced to either forego use of a rich OS like Linux for management, networking, and GUI or to add the significant cost, power, and footprint of a multi-chip solution.
With the ARMv8-R architecture, we now have the best of both worlds, a true real-time microcontroller that has the virtual memory and virtualization support to safely incorporate Linux without incurring the cost of separate hardware and without risking the operation of the critical software components.
Of course, we are also excited because ARMv8-R is a perfect match to INTEGRITY Multivisor. Unlike other hypervisors that only know how to run guest operating systems, our solution can host Linux in a VM while running real-time, critical tasks on the safety-certified INTEGRITY microkernel, which does double duty as the hypervisor. This simplifies the design and enables Linux to be incorporated with the smallest possible resource overhead.
I can't wait to see what exciting products will result from this groundbreaking new ARMv8-R hardware/software architecture. To learn more, please join me in my session at ARM Techcon on October 30, 'SCLinux: Safety Critical Linux for ARM.'
Guest Partner Blogger:
Dave Kleidermacher, CTO, Green Hills Software. Dave is responsible for technology strategy, platform planning, and solutions design. Kleidermacher is a leading authority in systems software and security, including secure operating systems, virtualization technology, and the application of high robustness security engineering principles to solve computing infrastructure problems. Kleidermacher earned his bachelor of science in computer science from Cornell University and has been with Green Hills Software since 1991.