Embedded Hypervisor Delivers Separation Kernel

April 28, 2011
Lynuxworks LynxSecure 5.0 separation kernel and hypervisor runs unmodified operating systems such as Microsoft Windows next to para-virtualized OSes.

Lynuxworks LynxSecure 5.0 separation kernel and hypervisor

Lynuxworks' LynxSecure 5.0 hypervisor is based on the separation kernel that is designed for Common Criteria EAL-7 security certification. It is designed to handle safety critical applications such as DO-178B avionics. LynxSecure implements a Multiple Independent Levels of Security/Safety (MILS) architecture (Fig. 1),

The latest version of LynxSecure supports Intel's latest processors including Sandy Bridge plus 32-bit Atom support. The latter allows 32-bit guest operating systems like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and LynxOS-SE 6.0. The Sandy Bridge improvements include support for Intel's Extended Page Table (EPT), Page Attribute Table (PAT) and the Advanced Vector Extensions (see Intel's AVX Scales To 1024 bit Vector Math ). Intel' 64-bit full virtualization (FV) suppor allows virtualized paritions to run as fast as paravirtualized systems. Virtualized operating systems can run in SMP mode.

LynxSecure utilized a fixed-cyclic ARINC 653-based scheduler manager. LynxSecure 5.0 supports direct device assignment as well as device sharing. It implements a new secure device virtualization mechanism that supports network, graphics, USB, disk, audio, and KVM devices. LynxSecure's policy-driven, inter-partition communication mechanism provides high performance and security when using these devices.

The system includes new target configuration tools that support auto configuration. This latest operating system is integrated with Lynuxworks' Eclipse-based Luminosity IDE. A streamlined target-resident version of Luminosity is included specifically to meet the needs of IT administrators.

LynxSecure can target a range of systems including laptops with limited resources. It also targets security-critical military, medical and avionics embedded applications.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.  

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