Design using complementary operating systems (Real-Time and Rich Application)

Design Using Complimentary Operating Systems use case

When systems benefit from using both an RTOS and a richer application OS, OKL4 improves reliability and reduces hardware requirements through its trustworthy virtualization capability.

Real-time operating systems (RTOS) offer a level of hard real time that is generally difficult to achieve when using more general-purpose application operating systems. Rich application operating systems (Linux and Windows in particular) enable access to a rich ecosystem of complementary capabilities (such as flexible GUIs) and connectivity support for enterprise systems that far exceeds what is available with a real-time operating system. For many applications, combining the attributes of a RTOS and the attributes of a rich application OS provides an ideal combination of capabilities. The system virtualization capabilities provided by OKL4 enable an RTOS and an application operating system, such as Linux, to share the processor and other device hardware reliably by running each in its own protected virtual machine (VM). OKL4 provides the mechanisms needed for software running in different VMs to communicate and interact in order to implement the functionality required for the device. OKL4 support for Linux virtual machines is available today. Support for additional operating systems within a virtual machine is available through either the OKL4 product roadmap or OK Labs professional services.

When used to provide system virtualization, OKL4 offers the following benefits:

• Improved device reliability because of the fact that each virtual machine has a separate address space and the fact that, when run in an OKL4 VM, each guest operating system runs entirely at user level and is not privileged, as it would be on bare hardware.
• High levels of system performance can be achieved in this configuration, largely because of OKL4’s high performance inter process communication (IPC).
• In addition to supporting one or more virtual machine running operating systems and their applications, OKL4 provides lightweight execution environments that offer critical programs a minimal trusted computing base, allowing further improvements in reliability and security.
• Design flexibility and reliability is also increased by OKL4’s flexible device handling infrastructure, which allows devices to be shared by multiple virtual machines and to reside either within an operating system environment or in an isolated and protected domain of their own.

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