ACRN Hypervisor achieves first commercial product integration

ACRN is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor built with real time processing and safety-criticality in mind. When developing ACRN 2.0, the community prioritised three key requirements for hypervisors in the Industrial IoT and edge environments: functional safety, real time processing and resource sharing for additional flexibility. TTTech Industrial and Intel are actively engaged in the project and have worked together to shape ACRN technology and rapidly integrate it into the Nerve Blue edge computing platform.

“The ACRN community is accelerating embedded development for the integration of heterogenous, real time applications in edge environments. This milestone really represents what the technical features that set ACRN apart,” said Mike Dolan, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Projects, Linux Foundation. “As the project and integrations mature, we expect even more contributions and innovations to result from this open source collaboration.”

Nerve Blue’s integration of ACRN 2.0 allows it to run PLC software for controlling high speed machine functions alongside other less time-sensitive software applications on the same hardware platform. Nerve Blue leverages ACRN 2.0’s unique features and optimisations to create special virtual environments that support cycle times down to 500μs for low latency applications. For example, an injection molding machine containing a standard industrial PC can now be fitted with Nerve Blue software to run its injection pressure control, Human-Machine Interface (HMI), gateway, data analytics, and predictive maintenance functions all on the same device - delivering considerable hardware savings and aiding more efficient machine operation.

“We are very proud to offer the first commercial implementation of ACRN for the industrial market,” said Thomas Berndorfer, Member of the Executive Board, TTTech Industrial. “Nerve Blue already provides users a highly virtualised environment for running machine software on standard industrial PCs. Now with the integration of ACRN 2.0 we have been able to extend our platform to safely and securely host software for controlling the most critical elements within a machine. Nerve Blue together with ACRN 2.0 will make a real impact for our customers as they seek to improve machine efficiency and reduce costs.”

Nerve Blue is available today on Intel Atom processor E3900 series, Intel Celeron processor N3350, and Intel Pentium processor N4200 (Apollo Lake) platforms, 8th Generation Intel Core U-Series (Whiskey Lake) processors. Early next year, Nerve Blue will be available for Intel Atom x6000E Series and Intel Pentium and Celeron N and J Series Processors for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications (Elkhart Lake). A free trial-version of Nerve Blue can be accessed here. For a 30-day period, users can experience remote software management and virtualised application hosting for themselves without any need to download special software or set up hardware.

“This collaboration between TTTech Industrial, Intel and Project ACRN will enable the next generation of industrial solutions,” said Brian McCarson, Vice President and Sr. Principal Engineer, Internet of Things Group at Intel Corporation. “The powerful combination of Intel industrial hardware and software platforms and ACRN‘s open-source, real time hypervisor is bringing scalable and reliable solutions to the most demanding real time applications.”