SYSGO’s Embedded Virtualization RTOS PikeOS Offers Android Personality

SYSGO is building its continuous growth on a matchless complementary portfolio including its Safe and Secure Virtualization (SSV) RTOS PikeOS and its Industrial Grade Linux ELinOS. Although being actively present in the military & aerospace market, SYSGO responds to a growing demand coming from other industrial sectors such as industrial automation, ground transportation, medical and more particularly automotive.

PikeOS enables multiple operating system interfaces, called Personalities, to work on separate sets of resources within a single machine. Examples of Personalities include Linux, POSIX, RTEMS, ARINC-653 and many others. Because of the resource separation enforced by the PikeOS microkernel, multiple applications with different safety and security requirements and belonging to different Personalities are able to co-exist on the same hardware platform. As Android apps are gaining in popularity, embedded systems designers in the mobile as well as in other industry sectors can now benefit from this unique functionality.

Android is an operating system built on a modified Linux kernel that includes a Java-based specific interface, allowing the application programs (apps) to be executed via a JIT interpreter when portability is required. Most of the Android devices rely on the ARM architecture and most of the Android code has been released under the Apache License, a free software and open source license.

We see our product concept of safe and secure virtualization being a valid option, if not the only option, for many embedded systems developers, said Jacques Brygier, VP Marketing of SYSGO. Our efforts in providing the highest level of combined safety and security for a powerful virtualization RTOS platform, is very attractive to a brand new set of applications, far beyond the traditional avionics or transportation areas. The porting of Android as a new Personality for our flagship product PikeOS is a natural move in that direction.

A growing community of developers writes Android apps that extend the functionality of the devices. As of December 2010 there were about 200,000 games, applications and widgets available on the Android Market, with an estimated 2.5 billion total downloads.

Originally designed for the mobile market where it just became the most common smartphone operating system, the Android OS is increasingly considered for other types of applications such as appliances (TV set), tablet computers, and automotive (infotainment).