Press Release
21st March 2016

NXP Hypervisor Software from X-ES for Secure, Lightweight Partitioning & Isolation

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) has announced a modified, lightweight version of the NXP hypervisor that supports partitioning and isolation for X-ES’ NXP QorIQ single board computers and processor mezzanine modules. The NXP (formerly Freescale) hypervisor is a special low-level software program that facilitates secure partitioning. It acts as a partition’s resource and security manager, presenting a virtual machine to the operating system running in each partition.
The hypervisor may manage multiple virtual machines and partitions, from a single thread on a core to multiple threads and multiple cores. X-ES provides a modified, lightweight version of the NXP hypervisor that supports partitioning and isolation.

The Case for Partitioning

Systems that traditionally use multiple processing boards to isolate applications can be consolidated into a single, multi-core board by using partitioning to allow each partition to run its application separately and securely.
For example, systems that employ Linux as the control plane and a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) as the data plane can benefit from this hybrid OS approach by being consolidated into a single slot.
In secure environments, partitioning provides a means to safely and effectively protect sensitive tasks from data intrusion.
Flexible Ethernet routing through the Linux Partition Manager allow for Ethernet ports to be dedicated to each host through a MAC-less interface or switched from multiple guest OSes to a single port. For serial, each guest can be multiplexed onto a single serial line for complete access.

Lightweight, Performance-Oriented Functionality

X-ES is an active contributor to NXP’s open-source hypervisor software, available free of charge and supported by X-ES for a nominal fee.
NXP’s MAC-less interface natively achieves Gigabit Ethernet line-rate performance for Linux guest operating systems. Extended support from X-ES for the MAC-less interface to Wind River’s VxWorks RTOS also realizes line-rate performance. For 32-bit operating systems, partitioning enables the use of more memory past the 4 GB (32-bit) boundary natively supported by operating system. For 64-bit operating systems, the full physical 40-bit addressing is supported.
The NXP embedded hypervisor software is unlike traditional hypervisors that provide scheduling services to enable multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single physical CPU. Instead, the NXP hypervisor provides a simple and lightweight method that exclusively addresses the problem of partitioning and isolation without being bloated by unnecessary features and functionality.

Featured NXP QorIQ T-Series Boards That Support the NXP Hypervisor

The NXP hypervisor can be utilised on a variety of X-ES NXP QorIQ T-Series products, including:

• XCalibur1931 6U VME SBC
• XPedite5970 3U OpenVPX™ REDI SBC
• XPedite6101 XMC/PrPMC mezzanine module
• XCalibur1840 6U VPX SBC.

For more information please contact the Sarsen Team on +44 1672 511166.