DSM Computer cooperates with Real-Time Systems for the RTS Hypervisor

On the demonstration system with the Galaxy control-cabinet PC shown for the first time in Hall 1, Booth 254 at the embedded world, a real-time operating system and the standard Windows® 8 operating system run completely independent of each other on the RTS Hypervisor. The complete real-time capability is always retained. Even when Windows crashes, the RTOS is not affected because all inputs/outputs are permanently assigned to the individual cores.

Christian Lang, marketing manager at DSM Computer GmbH, explained: With the implementation of the Hypervisor, we want to offer our customers high-performance multi-core embedded systems with ready-to-use software. This allows us to help optimize the development time and the costs of the customer application. We are sure that the deployment of virtualization technologies will also become increasingly important in the automation market.

Gerd Lammers, CEO at Real-Time Systems GmbH, said: DSM Computer, as one of the leading providers of innovative embedded systems, ensures the wide dissemination of our Hypervisor in industrial markets. The industrial computers with our tool are targeted at applications for which customers can deploy on a single hardware platform not only a deterministic real-time operating system for time-critical functions, but also a standard operating system for other tasks.

The RTS Real-Time Hypervisor has been developed for the management and the operation of distributed operating systems on individual cores of a multi-core processor. In addition to standard operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows or Linux, other popular real-time operating systems can also be operated unchanged. The tool handles the exclusive assignment of the processor cores, memory areas or I/O devices on independent operating systems. The operating systems behave as if they would run on separate hardware and so do not interfere with each other.

The assignment of these components to individual, virtually independent computers allows the hardware costs to be optimized significantly. Because the Hypervisor does not require any host operating system, all operating systems can be started or rebooted in any order. To simplify the communication between the individual operating systems, the tool supports a configured, distributed memory area as well as a virtual, TCP/IP-based network. The Hypervisor uses the Intel VTx technology for the reliable operation of standard operating systems.

The first DSM product with the RTS Hypervisor is the Galaxy G4-QM57 control-cabinet PC with the Intel Core i5-520M processor and the Intel QM57 chipset. In addition to the standard version, a more powerful model with the Intel Core i7-620M dual-core CPU is available optionally. The robust box IPC is designed specially for the harsh industrial environment. Thanks to its compact size of 149 x 260 x 280 mm, the system can be installed flexibly in the control cabinet. To permit the fast access to all components, the drive bay and the connections are located on the front side of the industrial housing. To expand the system with short, commercially-available supplementary modules or with customer-specific controller cards, the control-cabinet PC provides three free PCI slots and one PCI Express x1 slot.