un hosted environment. This drastically differs
from Type 1 monolithic architectures where
the hypervisor is integrated into a host OS,
or Type-1 microkernel architectures where
the hypervisor is controlled and assisted by a
root or parent operating system. LynxSecure
runs on a variety of computing platforms
including servers, desktops, and laptops. It
hosts guest OSs in both headless (no-display)
and local display modes to suit the needs of
several cloud environments and client end user
environments.
LynxSecure offers increased levels of perform-
ance by scheduling the execution of guest OSs
on CPU cores with an extremely light weight
scheduler. It also gives guest OSs direct control
over physical devices to achieve native I/O
performance, and gives guest OSs the ability
to intercommunicate over high speed point-
to-point communication channels. LynxSecure
is designed to meet the highest level of relia-
bility requirements for aerospace, medical,
military, and business applications. To achieve
high reliability the hypervisor runs as a stateless
executable with minimal dynamic functionality
for a stable foundation, uses a real-time sched-
uler to precisely guarantee the availability of
all guest OSs, and provides advanced built-in
auditing and health monitoring capabilities to
continuously monitor the operation of critical
hardware and software components.
Type Zero provides greater security over
Type-1 hypervisors by moving non-essential
privileged components out of the hypervisor
core, such as device drivers and I/O stacks, to
reduce the system attack surface. Additionally,
it enhances security with management and
configuration tools that run outside the
hypervisor to give administrators the ability
to construct flexible security designs to explic-
itly control and monitor how the virtual guest
OSs access data via virtual and physical devices.
The last ten years have shown a trend in
hypervisor design evolution where each stage
of evolution shows progress towards shrinking
and simplifying the core foundation of hyper-
visors to improve performance, reliability, and
security.
The transition from Type 2 to Type-1 shows
the hypervisor shift from running as an appli-
cation on a general purpose OS to being
tightly integrated with a minimized host OS.
The transition from Type-1 to Type Zero
shows the decoupling of the integrated hyper-
visor from the supporting host OS to running
stand-alone. The LynxSecure Type Zero hy-
pervisor distils the trusted portions of the hy-
pervisor down to the fundamental elements,
and provides the development tools necessary
to build custom high-performance, safe and
secure virtualization platforms.
n
Figure 2. Type 2 hypervisor
35
April 2014
R
EAL
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TIME
O
PERATING
S
YSTEMS
Figure 3. Type 1 hypervisor
Product News
n
Cadence: verification planning and
management with Incisive vManager
Cadence Design Systems introduced an all-
new Incisive vManager solution, a verification
planning and management solution enabled
by client/server technology to address the
growing verification closure challenge driven
by increasing design size and complexity. The
Incisive vManager solution, with its metric-
driven verification methodology, improves ver-
ification productivity by 2X or greater over
traditional methods by combining executable
verification plans, coverage optimization tech-
niques, collaborative management utilities,
deep failure and coverage analysis, and clear
visibility to see when to shift resources.
n
Enea’s SoC platform consolidates
ARM-based software systems
Enea is working with HP, ARM and Texas In-
struments on a System-on-Chip platform for
next generation mobile infrastructure and net-
working. Customers can now focus on their
differentiating applications rather than solving
interoperability problems related to the frag-
mentation and complexity of the underlying
heterogeneous hardware.The SoC platform
was developed with communication systems
and Software Defined Networks in mind, pro-
viding excellent hard real-time and throughput
characteristics on TI’s KeyStone II-based device
with components tested individually and in-
tegrated in one solution.
