Virtualization is a well-known software technology that supports the running of two or more (guest) operating systems (OSs) simultaneously on the same hardware platform. Virtualization software hosts multiple virtual machines (VMs), each of which can run guest OSs by abstracting, partitioning, and multiplexing underlying hardware resources such as computing power, memory, and peripheral devices.

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These VMs abstract available system resources (memory, storage, CPU cores, I/O, etc.) and present them in a regular fashion so “guest” software cannot distinguish VM-based execution from running on actual physical hardware. A software layer called a virtual-machine monitor, commonly known as a hypervisor, implements the VM (Fig. 1).

Virtualization is a “killer app” enabler in the enterprise and on the desktop, conferring benefits in load balancing, server consolidation, legacy code migration, cross-platform interoperability, and security. In the last few years, virtualization has also made key inroads in embedded applications such as mobile and Internet devices. In fact, mobile virtualization gives designers many powerful tools to address a variety of device development challenges.

Reducing Costs

Smart phones, which represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile market, are based on rich application OSs such as Android, Linux, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. Unfortunately, the nexus of features, functionality, and margin found in smart phones does not easily translate to the mainstream mobile marketplace. Feature phones and entry-level handsets, with more modest bills of materials (BOMs) and price points, simply cannot deliver the same functionality and user experience.

Ram Sarabu is the senior product manager at Open Kernel Labs. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University.

Many features and functions separate smart phones from mass-market devices, as does price. One of the major contributors to the cost of high-end handsets lies in dedicating separate CPUs for application, baseband, and multimedia processing. To realize the market opportunity for a mobile phone with the rich application support found in smart phones but at a feature phone price, the first step is to consolidate application and baseband processing onto a single-core CPU.

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