Wind River Hypervisor Virtualizes Multicore Processors

Wind River calls its new high performance Hypervisor Type 1 a "pillar" of multicore software development. The California firm had announced its key development work on multicore asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) in early March, supported by hardware maker Intel. The new Wind River Hypervisor should now enable virtualization on single- and multicore processors. It does it through Wind River's own brand of Linux and VxWorks operating systems, but also supports other "general purpose" platforms.

Videos, online demos and detailed background data for Wind River Hypervisor are on the product announcement webpage.

The new Wind River Hypervisor delivers virtualization on single- and multicore CPUs.

The hypervisor should provide users opportunities to replace multiple boards or CPUs with a single board or CPU and run various OSs on it. Wind River sees increasing applications with little energy usage, initially in the aerospace, automotive and consumer electronics industries. The firm had showed its proximity to the auto industry in March at CeBIT 2009, where they announced its partnership with BMW, Peugeot, Intel and others as part of the Genivi Alliance.

Especially for applications in the aerospace and defense industries, Wind River also announced availability of the VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0. MILs here stands for multiple independent levels of security, which should meet the needs of real-time operating system (RTOS) requirements surrounding the stringent EAL6+ Common Criteria security assurance level.

The partnership with Intel will likely intensify as a result of Intel's purchase of Wind River in early June. The deal cost the chipmaker $900 million and will go into effect the summer of 2009.