The Trango Hypervisor has targeted ARM- and MIPS-based CPUs, creating "multiple virtual processors running isolated from one another." Each virtual processor can execute a rich operating system, such as Windows CE or Linux; a real-time operating system; or a standalone driver or application.

Trango's product previously supported ARMv5, MIPS32, and MIPS64 processors, and was updated last year to support ARMv6 instruction set architecture (ISA). Via this week's announcement, it now becomes compatible with TI's OMAP3430, which is based on an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 core. (For a block diagram of the OMAP 3430, see here.) This core provides a performance boost of up to 300 percent compared to ARMv6, making virtualization take place even more smoothly, according to Trango.

Trango says a key benefit of running its hypervisor on phones or other devices using the OMAP3430 is reducing, or even eliminating, the necessity of modifying drivers when moving from one OS platform to another. Pierre Coulombeau, chief operating officer of Trango, said, "Our product allows developers to eliminate porting costs associated with peripheral drivers and makes rich OS porting extremely fast."

Other touted benefits of the Trango Hypervisor are:

• Isolating proprietary code from code released under the GPL (GNU General Public License) or other open-source licenses -- software in different partitions behaves as though on separate processors, the company claims
  
  
• Running a "rich OS" such as Windows CE or Linux in parallel with performance- or security-critical applications and services, such as DRM, with the latter being "fully isolated and protected against hardware and software attacks"
  
  
• Leveraging the enhanced performance of a Cortex-A8 or ARMv6 CPU core, by integrating functions traditionally executed on two or more processors onto a single processor

NTT DoCoMo OSTI profile using Hypervisor
Source: Trango
Trango has also claimed its Hypervisor enables smartphone designers to create smartphones that have BOM (bill of materials) costs comparable to those of typical feature phones, by integrating both baseband/modem and application processing functions onto a single processor.

Further information

Trango did not release pricing or availability information for the TI OMAP3430 version of its hypervisor. However, the software is being demonstrated at this week's Expo Comm Wireless Japan show in Tokyo, running Windows CE 6.0, Linux, and uITRON "simultaneously and securely," according to the company.

The Trango Hypervisor supports Windows CE, Linux, Symbian OS, eCos, uC-OSII, uITRON and other proprietary RTOSes. It is shipped with a complete SDK and tool suite based on Eclipse.

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