Tenasys has long offered INTime, a Windows extension that uses Intel virtualization technologies, allowing real-time apps to run deterministically alongside standard apps. eVM for Windows 1.0, announced at this week's Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, apparently goes even further: Instead of working only with real-time apps employing the INTime RTOS (real-time operating system), eVM supports those written for legacy RTOSes such as VxWorks, QNX Neutrino, Windows CE, and real-time Linux derivatives.


EVM for Windows in action
Source: Tenasys(Click to enlarge)

According to Tenasys, "full native" performance is provided by the fact that eVM for Windows (above) runs these RTOSes alongside Windows on a multicore processor platform. Contrasting eVM to enterprise-oriented virtualization products, the company promises that time-critical I/O processes are never interrupted, preserving the determinism of the real-time apps and guest RTOses.

Tenasys says that by utilizing multi-core Intel VT processors, eVM partitions resources, such as CPU cores, RAM, interrupts, and I/O, between operating systems. Only shared and emulated resources need to be virtualized, and each OS is guaranteed direct physical access to its dedicated I/O, interrupts, RAM, and CPU cycles, the company adds.

Tenasys eVM architecture

At the time of writing, Tenasys' data sheet for eVM for Windows 1.0 and a related background were offline, so we couldn't determine the product's minimum hardware requirements. However, the company says eVM requires CPUs to have VT-x virtualization at least, and VT-d "for the best level of compatibility, especially in bus mastering modes."

Separately, Tenasys is said to have used Embedded World to demonstrate INtime running on Intel's "Pineview" Atoms, the N450, D410, and D510. The software reportedly performs adequately on both single-core hyper-threaded chips and dual core processors.

A Control Engineering item by Renee Robbins quotes Kim Hartman, Tenasys' vice president of marketing and sales, as saying, "eVM for Windows is the result of progressive innovation and validation of our technologies in mission-critical applications that has taken place over more than a quarter century. It allows us to deliver the benefits that we have been delivering via our own very successful INtime for Windows RTOS to customers who have too deep of an investment in intellectual property based on other RTOSs to port their applications to INtime."

Further information

Further information on Tenasys eVM for Windows 1.0 may be found on the Tenasys website, here. A video demonstration of the software may be found here.

The Control Engineering item referenced above may be found here.

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