EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. — Feb. 9, 2009 — The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) today announced that LynuxWorks™ has joined the consortium’s Hypervisor Subcommittee, which has unanimously elected Arun Subbarao, vice president of engineering at LynuxWorks, to serve as its chair.
LynuxWorks is a supplier of embedded software and tools, including the recently introduced LynxSecure 2.0 separation kernel and embedded hypervisor.
The EEMBC Hypervisor Subcommittee is working on a new set of benchmarks that will measure the contribution of hypervisors, also known as virtual machine managers, to performance, code size, and energy consumption in a wide range of embedded systems.
“Hypervisors are rapidly growing in popularity for use in embedded applications such as mobile devices, telecom equipment, consumer products, and automotive/industrial,” said EEMBC President Markus Levy. “Having the participation of the technical experts of LynuxWorks, especially with their direct knowledge of the interaction of hypervisors and real-time operating systems, will help to ensure a robust and fair hypervisor benchmark suite.”
A hypervisor is a program that allows multiple operating systems or execution environments to run simultaneously on a single embedded processor. In a multicore environment, a hypervisor can also distribute the operating systems and applications across multiple cores. The benefits of using a hypervisor as a virtualization platform include better load balancing and lower power consumption, by virtue of migrating processes dynamically to underutilized cores, and greater uptime through background firmware updates and redundant OS imaging.
“A number of key factors are contributing to the increasing adoption of embedded hypervisor technology, such as running legacy code and operating systems, migration to new multicore chips, and the need for security separation of applications,” said Subbarao. “However, real-time performance and determinism is still one of the top factors in the selection of hypervisors, and our engineers at LynuxWorks are excited about using their knowledge to help in the creation of a hypervisor benchmark suite alongside other EEMBC members.”
In addition to LynuxWorks, member companies that have participated in the EEMBC Hypervisor Subcommittee include AMD, ARM, Cavium Networks, Freescale Semiconductor, Green Hills Software, IBM, Intel, Marvell Semiconductor, MIPS Technologies, Nokia Siemens Networks, Open Kernel Labs, VirtualLogix, and VMware. EEMBC welcomes inquiries from companies that are interested in contributing to the development of HyperBench by becoming a member of the EEMBC board of directors or its Hypervisor Subcommittee.
About LynuxWorks™
LynuxWorks™, a world leader in the embedded software market, is committed to providing open and reliable real-time operating systems (RTOS) and software tools to embedded developers. The company’s LynxOS® family of operating systems offers open standards with the highest level of safety and security features, enabling many mission-critical systems in defense, avionics, and other industries. Additionally, LynuxWorks’ BlueCat® Linux provides the features and support of embedded Linux for companies wanting to use open-source technology for their embedded applications. The Eclipse-based Luminosity IDE gives a powerful and consistent development system across all LynuxWorks operating systems. Since it was established in 1988, LynuxWorks has created technology that has been successfully deployed in thousands of designs and millions of products made by leading communications, avionics, aerospace/defense, and consumer electronics companies. LynuxWorks’ headquarters are located in San José, Calif. For more information: www.lynuxworks.com.
About EEMBC
EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, develops benchmark software that helps processor architects and embedded system designers better understand the capabilities of embedded microprocessors and the systems in which they are used. Currently available benchmark software allows users to predict unicore and multicore processor performance and its associated energy cost in digital entertainment, digital imaging, networking, and office automation applications. Additional suites address automotive, embedded Java, and telecom applications. The consortium’s operations include an EEMBC Technology Center that provides a full range of benchmarking and benchmark score certification services in addition to serving as EEMBC’s R&D center for benchmark software development.