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Cellphones Operating Systems Windows

VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up 179

Posted by timothy from the what-about-triple dept.
Sharky2009 writes "VMware is developing virtualisation for smartphones which can run any two OSes — Windows Mobile, Android or Linux — at once. The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time. VMware says: 'We don't think dual booting will be good enough — we'll allow you to run both profiles at the same time and be able to switch between them by clicking a button,' he said. 'You'll be able to get and make calls in either profile – work or home – as they will both be live at any given point in time.'" Also mentioned in February of this year, but now the company's announced a target of 2012 for mass production.
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VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up More

VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up

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  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Supposedly, it's to support the growing trend (seriously?) of companies requiring employees to provide their own phones/PCs/whatever. Virtualization will allow them to run a "work phone" environment on their personal phone. Reported advantage is that it eliminates the need to carry two phones while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.

      Sounds great, huh?

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:06AM (#30349744)

        At our company employees do get their own cell phone, company chips in $30 or $60 a month depending on whether they need a data plan (which we cover the cost of) into the first paycheck of the month.

        Works extremely well.

        I don't really see the point of this in the real world. I could see where this could be useful where we would have 1 phone and test in Windows Mobile and Android on one hardware platform. Outside of that, I see no real value.

        • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sznupi ( 719324 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:09AM (#30349760) Homepage

          Virtualization is hip. Somebody at your management will be swayed.

        • Nokia has a home screen / work screen on some of their smartphones, without the need for any virtualisation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rvw ( 755107 )

            Nokia has a home screen / work screen on some of their smartphones, without the need for any virtualisation.

            Great! But that still requires a Nokia phone, and all employees have to buy Nokia. What if they want a Pre or Android phone?

            • Then I'm sure the same feature could be introduced to Palm OS or Android, again without the need for virtualisation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by CXI ( 46706 )
          It's not just the security aspect. When a company provides a cell phone it has tax consequences and there are specific reporting requirements where all personal calls must be identified and repaid to the company. Given the free and unlimited minutes, as well as the volume of calls someone would make, this is a major PITA to deal with. My employer requires that all calls on the work phone be work calls, period. Unfortunately, even though the IRS knows this is bad and wants to fix it, they have to ask Congres

      • Except for the fact that the phone will likely still have only one SIM card, only one telephone number, and you'll now be on-call when you need your phone for personal business.

        • That's not a change in lifestyle for many folks these days.

        • I've seen two-SIM phones before. I don't know about availability, cost, etc, but it would be a good idea for some people.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )
            Two SIM phones are common in Asia and among the low cost clone phones. You don't see them in the US or even Europe since the telcos are adamant that they do not want you to have access to any other 'service'.

            I just bought a very cheap iPhone clone Sciphone i9+ from Hong Kong for US$71 that has dual SIMS micro memory card slot. iPhone-like icons, camera, video, acceleration sensor (changes orientation of photos when you tilt the phone, etc.), FM radio, lots of other stuff.

            The dual SIMS are great for me s

        • Except for the fact that the phone will likely still have only one SIM card, only one telephone number,

          Google has an app for that.

      • while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.

        Unless the two systems can't access files stored by the other one, how are you going to keep somebody from accessing work data from the home side of the phone? If nothing else, they can still email it home from the personal side without any record of it on the work side.

        • Apparently, you're not especially familiar with virtual machines. You can isolate the machines, so that they are never aware of each other, or you can set up networking between them, or you can allow them to simply share resources on hard disk. It all depends on the administrator's goals how they are set up. I can allow a WinXP VM to bet so infested with malware that it can't even boot up, but it has zero effect on a similar WinXP VM running on the same hardware. Well - aside from consuming CPU cycles, w

          • Apparently, you're not especially familiar with virtual machines.

            It's true that I've not needed to work with them as yet. However, your reply either doesn't answer my question or I don't understand you answer. Are you saying that by default one VM can't access files created by another and isn't even aware of them?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jurily ( 900488 )

        Virtualization will allow them to run a "work phone" environment on their personal phone. Reported advantage is that it eliminates the need to carry two phones while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.

        And where is the part that requires two OSes? This is the classic "solution looking for a problem".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thsths ( 31372 )

        > Virtualization will allow them to run a "work phone" environment on their personal phone. Reported advantage is that it eliminates the need to carry two phones while still firewalling off work data from the "personal phone" environment.

        Except that it does not. It will (if implemented properly) shield the private phone from the work phone, but not the other way around. Or, in short: trusting an untrustworthy platform is a bad idea. So if your work data is so important, it needs to run on a work phone.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

          I wouldn't mind a single device that could be used for both business and personal use, but it would need additional hardware features... such as dual sim cards (a lot of the Chinese phones already have this) and probably dual removable memory, and removable cameras and other recording devices (though a lot of businesses have yielded on restrictions of some of those things lately, if only because it's almost impossible to get a phone without a built-in camera and even bluetooth these days.)

          But this would be

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        That sounds like quite a disturbing trend, if the company does not own the hardware then it cannot demand you remove any data from it or enforce any kind of policies on it...
        Most places I've worked explicitly forbade the use of personal equipment for work purposes.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by salted-fry ( 1625847 )
      When all you have is virtualization, all your markets look like... um, virtualization problems? (not very catchy, is it)

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)

      by oxfletch ( 108699 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:15AM (#30349798)

      Because they're VMware and they don't have anything more useful to do?

    • No, really, why?

      This is supported behind the scenes by the battery industry. Several years back, a phone that couldn't last one week would be viewed as kinda week, smartphones put that limit down to a day with real use, and of course, this virtualization will be completely useless for most people, but they'll accept having to charge the phone every 6 hours now. So instead of replacing a battery every 2 years, it'll go through all of expected lifecycle in 3 months. Profit! $$$

      (I can't think of any other

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      There's already a hot market for dual-SIM card phones, but that requires you to "dual boot". If your job requires you live/do your job through your phone, this makes things a lot easier.

      • No, you're confusing two things.

        On the one hand, you have dual sim hacks ( http://mobile.brando.com/dual-sim_c0937d100?shop_by=category ) for normal phones, which do indeed require a reboot to switch between sims.

        On the other hand, there are (a limited number of) real dual-sim phones ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_SIM#Active_dual-SIM_phones ), which allow you to receive calls from both sims, and software-select on which sim your outgoing calls are made.

    • Virtualization exists because OS companies have a hard time making resilient OSes. In an ideal world, it wouldn't be needed, and OSes would be reliable, load-balancing... natively.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jimicus ( 737525 )

        Virtualization exists because OS companies have a hard time making resilient OSes. In an ideal world, it wouldn't be needed, and OSes would be reliable, load-balancing... natively.

        Such an OS has existed. It was called OpenVMS.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          Can't say that I've used the latest version of it, but my only response is:

          You' RW-ASTed...

          Granted, my linux box has similar failures when mounts and things like that go away. Who builds OSes and starts with the functional requirement that external devices should never go offline?

      • If the OSes aren't capable of load-balancing properly on their own, how is it that the VMs running on them are properly load-balanced?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mrboyd ( 1211932 )
        I thought it was mostly used as a way to detach the software form the hardware thus limiting the impact of hardware failure. I don't really see how virtualizing a crappy OS will give you load balancing. Did you mean redundancy?

        • both actually, it's my understanding that the latest VMs do both, but I may be wrong ?

        • Everyone sees something different as the "major win" for virtualization. Yours is certainly valid. The GP's is a little more dodgy. Another common one is that since it can be difficult to fully separate administration roles from application management roles - just creating two VM's is "somewhat safer" than having one machine with two apps running on it. Yet another is to protect from poorly coded packages stomping on each other with different levels of dependencies. One more is to have different patching ou

    • Why not stick a toe in the water? It wasn't long ago that desktops bogged running VMs, and now we can run many of them.

      As cell phones become more like multi-purpose computers, expect more capability.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wisty ( 1335733 )

      No, really, why?

      Because everyone knows that the problem with smartphones is while that they have way too many pixels, standardized input devices, video cards that can render billions of polygons a second, and a buttload of RAM; but you just can't run games like Crysis on your trendy Apple, or use PhotoShop on your home dev box / server.

    • But, (admittedly) technical users are seeing several different options now and each option has something the other doesn't, whether it's just a trivial game, itunes, better contacts/calendar, whatever. Like it or not, phones are used for so much more than just making calls.

      I can see having the ability to use more than one of those options simultaneously as somewhat desirable.

      But yeah, this would probably only be useful to the more power users.

  • great, so my phone can be even slower (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @12:55AM (#30349686)

    The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time.

    Are they including a free RAM upgrade kit? And why does this seem to be a hammer in search of non-existent nails?

    The biggest problem I have right now: lack of dual SIM (or multi-line) support in almost any phone. I don't need to separate "work applications" from "home applications." I need to have a work number / data plan billed to my company, and a home number (with no data plan) billed to me.

    *Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...

    • Re:great, so my phone can be even slower (Score:5, Informative)

      by lamapper ( 1343009 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:07AM (#30349752) Homepage Journal

      *Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...

      My phone is smart because it runs a Linux distro that allows for root access when required. Meaning I am not restricted, tethered, limited etc...

      I bought my phone two years ago, so it is not new.

      Nokia Nxxx (770, 800, 810, 900) all will allow you to run WiFi, VoIP, etc... With the N900 you have the option of getting a cellular plan if you must. Personally I would not bother with cellular any time soon, but that is my choice.

      Thanks to my choice (VoIP + WiFi on my "smart" linux enabled (maemo) hand set) my total cost of ownership (TCO) is less than $100 per year. You read that right, less than $100 per year. $24 per year for SkypeIn (with SkypePro) + $3.00 per month for unlimited calling. $24 + $36 and I am done. That is for one year.

      I love it. So make sure you purchase the right phone. Hint on the WiFi Firewall/Router, get a DD-WRT supported device! [dd-wrt.com]. Check the website first before you purchase and only purchase hardware that supports DD-WRT, that way you can control your router and insure WiFi access via a secure intranet.

      Your solution is simple, purchase the right hand set. Buy the right phone. If it will not run a Linux (that allows you to access root when required) then do not buy it! Are you limited, tethered, restricted...then you must not have root access to fix that!

      A strong password for your root account is enough of a security deterrent and has been for years, so please do not spread that FUD.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by w0mprat ( 1317953 )
        How android works is analogous to a virtual machine already. If you've rooted your Android phone you don't really have full root access to what runs underneath the Linux variant.

        My phone is smart because it runs a Linux distro that allows for root access when required.

        The linux you have root too is really running a layer above the the radio software etc. This is why rooting your 'droid is (reasonably) safe, you stilll don't get root to fsck with the fundamentals of the phone and bring down the local 3G network. On a side note, your user-level applications run in their own sandboxed userids and no

      • Thanks to my choice (VoIP + WiFi on my "smart" linux enabled (maemo) hand set) my total cost of ownership (TCO) is less than $100 per year. You read that right, less than $100 per year. $24 per year for SkypeIn (with SkypePro) + $3.00 per month for unlimited calling. $24 + $36 and I am done. That is for one year.

        It also is not much more useful than using a landline and pay phones. The point in a mobile phone is that you are mobile.

        If however you never go outside, or otherwise spend 100% of your time in areas with free WiFi, then it's great for you, but there's no point making a big deal about it because it's a useless idea for most mobile users.

        Me, I have a company mobile and we're allowed personal use as long as we don't take the piss. I send and receive a few texts each week, and sometimes use internet services (

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by olden ( 772043 )

        ... Thanks to my choice (VoIP + WiFi on my "smart" linux enabled (maemo) hand set) my total cost of ownership (TCO) is less than $100 per year. ... $24 per year for SkhypeIn (with SkhypePro) + $3.00 per month for unlimited calling...

        Huh, if all you need is calling while next to a WiFi hotspot, "less than $100/y" remains way overpriced IMHO.
        I use VoIP from my cellphone for maybe $10 to $20/y with SIPdroid [sipdroid.org] + IPkall [ipkall.com] DID + JustVoip [justvoip.com] (or others [backsla.sh]) + optional: Asterisk [asteriskpbx.org], SIPBroker [sipbroker.com] and E164 [e164.org]. But all this is mostly irrelevant as my reason for having a cell is to call from places other than home or work = often without WiFi.

        Back on topic: VMware stuff is IMO like that VoIP/WiFi stuff: sure cool, appealing to geeks. Good for PR / publicity. But

      • Interesting. I don't own a cell phone - the wife and kids do, but the service in our area makes them just about useless. You have to go to town to get decent service at all.

        But, you've got me interested in playing with a Nokia. Thanks!

    • Frankly, the RAM is the easiest part of all this. All you need for that is a few dollars worth of well proven technology that gets cheaper all the time.

      Battery life is the real kicker. The very best commercially available batteries are just barely adequate for one smartphone OS, much less two trampling on one another. These phones will either last 3 hours, or hearken back to the "old school brick" form factor.

      Dual SIM is funny. Horrible little Chinese knockoff phones, with inscrutable UIs and more mis

      • Frankly, the RAM is the easiest part of all this. All you need for that is a few dollars worth of well proven technology that gets cheaper all the time.

        Except that every embedded device or phone has very constrained amounts of memory, because they're trying to get the per-unit cost down as much as possible to get per-unit pricing up as much as possible (or drop the price to compete- cell phones are a commodity item.) When's the last time you even saw RAM specs on a phone? The iPhone (non 3GS) has 128MB

        • I realize that the embedded world is extremely cost sensitive, constantly trimming as far down as possible.

          My point was just that, if the customer/carrier requirement is now "Phone that runs two OSes and a hypervisor, needs more RAM" your ODM will raise an eyebrow and raise your bill; but everything should otherwise slot neatly in to existing designs, and the per-megabyte cost of all that RAM will definitely be lower next year.

          If you demand more battery capacity, on the other hand, you'll get "Sure, n

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sznupi ( 719324 )

        RAM for mobiles could be a bit more expensive though, has to use very little power.

        BTW, Samsung also has dual sim phones. From quick Google search those are at least d880, c6112, d980, w629, b5722, b5702, c3212, c5212...so quite a lot.

      • Battery life is the real kicker. The very best commercially available batteries are just barely adequate for one smart phone OS, much less two trampling on one another. These phones will either last 3 hours, or hearken back to the "old school brick" form factor.

        Battery life on any computer is a pain. I just gave up and kept a phone cord at work and at home. And that is only because I have had power cords break from being moved too much. Also when I get to the office or get home, I simply plug in my Nokia N800.

        There was a time where a company, do not know the name, wish I did, was selling an external rechargeable battery. The one I was looking at cost between $150 - $300 per battery and was the size of a small laptop, but only about 1/2 inch thick. It was in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        The reason chinese phones support dual sim and ones you've heard of don't, is because the manufacturers you know of are in the pockets of mobile operators, while the chinese ones aren't.
        Dual sim is a useful feature for the end user of the phone, but not for the operator, and most of the big name manufacturers are building handsets for operators not for users.

      • You don't really need more battery if the background OS is idle or nearly so. Also, while the batteries aren't getting that much better, OLED is starting to see more uptake so the screens are taking less power, and the process technology continues to march forward, making the CPUs consume less power as well. The radio won't use more power in this scenario, so I'm not seeing the problem (except that battery life is not improving as fast as I would like.)

    • Virtualisation would have seemed this way on PCs in the 90s, with machines starved for then-expensive RAM. What I remember of virtualisation in the early days is it was slow and you'd never consider virtualising anything for a production environment. I would have laughed if you told me you could run 2,4,10 VMs feasibily on one server.

      Of course, that smartphones will begin to follow moores law the same way, we'll see much more memory space and cpu horsepower in the same power envelope very soon, so any qu
    • What, so the manufacturers should shoot themselves in the foot by providing dual-SIM? If they do that, then you won't need to buy two phones! There's a reason that most dual (or triple) SIM phones come from no-name Chinese manufacturers.
      • Well, I'm sure the cellular service providers could somehow strong arm the manufacturers into doing that. The cellular service providers typically lose money on each phone, but more than make up for it via their 1 and 2 year service agreements. The dual SIMs would be a boon for the cellular service providers IMO.

    • When I read this my first thought was that this is yet another sign that the difference between smartphones, netbooks, and even laptops and desktops is fading. The form factor is what remains mainly, as we can pack more and more computing power in smaller and smaller packages.

      We can do things now on smartphones that 10, 15 years ago were just getting possible on an average desktop PC. And the gap is narrowing quickly. OS vendors (and VMWare is pretty much in that market) these days are of course looking at

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      *Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...

      There are several SIP applications for Android. The best I've used is Fring which integrates part of skype, MSN, Gtalk and a few others. There is also [androlib.com] SIPDroid [androlib.com] but this is hit and miss with Australian VoIP providers.

      It will be 2010 shortly and only we elitist open source people will enjoy VOIP on our mobile devices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by faragon ( 789704 )

      *Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...

      Check the Nokia N900 [google.com]... and yes, it runs Linux.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Krneki ( 1192201 )
      VOIP and dual SIM cards support would mean healthier Telcos competition. You know we can't have that, do you?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rexdude ( 747457 )

      *Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...

      You must be in the US!

      There are numerous VOIP capable smartphones available as others have mentioned, it's another story if your service provider deliberately disables the feature or blocks it from working on their network.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Sounds like you need a new smartphone. My Nokia E65 has integrated VoIP and it can, with a third-party dual-sim adapter, handle multiple SIM chips (though not both at the same time). Most of the Nokia smartphone line that runs symbian has integrated VoIP that works very well.

  • The real questions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:06AM (#30349736) Homepage

    With Microsoft's OS lagging way behind the others in the mobile market, does VMware plan to convince Steve Ballmer that running other companies' OSes side-by-side with Windows Mobile will be a good way to regain market share?

    VMware says virtualization can separate personal data and apps from work ones. But if the trend is for smartphone apps to be essentially browser-based, or at least built with Web standards, isn't running a hypervisor and multiple OS instances on a phone the very definition of overkill?

    Equally important, if Apple is unwilling to allow even the Flash player onto iPhones, how does VMware figure it's going to convince Apple to run a hypervisor?

    Oh wait, the last one is actually easy: VMware's release doesn't even mention Apple. Doesn't mention BlackBerry either. Or Symbian. Funny how this revolutionary, much-in-demand technology specifically excludes the top 85 percent of the smartphone market.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )

      It's not "top". It's simply...85 percent.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        It's the top 85 percent in the sense that the OSes with the largest market share are Symbian, BlackBerry, and iPhone, in that order. Windows Mobile, Android, and Linux combined barely rival iPhone's third-place market share.

        VMware's software doesn't just run on also-rans; it only runs on also-rans.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )
      This will be useful for running several versions of Android on the same device without having to re-flash them and in some cases lose most of your settings. There's also Maemo and WinMo accounts for more then 15% of the mobile market, especially as outside the US hosted blackberry services haven't been as successful.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        There's also Maemo . . .

        I believe that's included under the heading of "Linux/Other," along with Palm WebOS.

        . . . and WinMo accounts for more then 15% of the mobile market

        Care to back that up? No respectable figure I've seen puts it that high, and Gartner's latest figures suggest it's about half that. [zdnet.co.uk] (And if you can't trust Gartner to inflate figures in Microsoft's favor, whom can you trust?)

  • But it is also overused by people who don't want to configure their operating system. The big advantage they have is the ability to seamlessly move a VM between different bits of hardware. I don't see that being proposed here.

    It might actually be handy to move an image from my eeepc to my openmoko, and then back again later. In practice I just run compatible applications where I need an interface to work. The wholesale copying of images would make merging a problem as well.

  • I can not be the only person who sees a problem with a restricted virtual layer running underneath the operating system on any device that I own. I would not put up with tethering, I will not put up with that.

    I do not have a problem with a virtual layer running under the OS on a system I own, as long as I have 100% access and control to that virtual layer. Meaning I can remove, reconfigure, reinstall and tweak it as I see fit. The last thing any of us need is for some entity to not only track us, but m

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )

      Uhm...mobile phones already must have a closed source code in them - the radio signaling stack. Mandated by FCC in the case of US.

      (oh, if you are throwing away your smartphone because of what you've just learned...could you spend a little time and sent it to me? (only if it's a quad band GSM) I cover the cost of shipping of course)

  • At what point does the VM become another OS? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Monday December 07, 2009 @01:38AM (#30349900)
    I know that we are talking specifically about phone based VMs here and that the issue of better OS vs VM has been discussed before, but I cannot understand why we need to virtualize any time an OS is involved. Perhaps I am missing something? If the hypervisor becomes, essentially, the operating system why is it not possible to integrate the process isolation and partitioning features of the hypervisor into the OS in the first place? Are these types of features even really needed on the more limited environments offered by phones (even smartphones)? I agree that virtualization is a valuable technology that has its uses, but sometimes it seems that virtualization and VMs are becoming the proverbial golden hammers [wikipedia.org] (along with the ubiquitous "cloud" computing).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rdebath ( 884132 )

      I can summarise the problem in one word. Windows.

      No! Stop! I'm not trying to bash Windows. It's a simple fact the Microsoft strongly recommend that you use one machine for one application and never add a second job and it's not just for license revenue. It's because problems leak between the applications. Registry "corruptions", "everything needs a reboot", DLL versions being always system wide ("DLL hell"). Some applications demanding particular OS configurations, others demanding the opposite (eg: exch

  • Unfortunately, wireless carriers and regulators want to put restrictions on the radio and other mobile smart phone functionality. The common solution on single processor devices is to run third party applications in a sandbox, like Android's Java VM, and require application signing.

    Virtualization can be a provide a less restrictive common environment sandbox, that is not tied to a specific programming language, that can meet the desires of the carrier on cheaper (single processor) hardware, and still prote

  • Already most of the way there (Score:5, Informative)

    by david.given ( 6740 ) <dg@cowlark.com> on Monday December 07, 2009 @06:45AM (#30351314) Homepage Journal
    Hypervisors are already widely used in mobile phones --- L4 is very popular. I think that this is largely because it allows the vendors to easily reconfigure the user mode address space to abstract over any platform-specific issues involved with a particular phone model. I've also seen some very neat tricks using L4 such as doing on-demand page fetching from a compressed NAND flash device. (In essence, that gives you the equivalent of executable ROM from a smaller, non-mappable flash part.)

    So it wouldn't be much of a bigger step to use L4's other hypervisor features to support two different user space modes, each running a complete operating system. This has a lot of advantages to the phone manufacturer. Right now, most smartphones such as the G1 have a big chunky processor running the application OS and a smaller processor running the hard realtime radio stack OS. Using a hypervisor would allow them to run both operating systems on the same processor, with the hypervisor's own scheduler ensuring that the radio stack remains real-time no matter what the user OS is doing. That reduces the hardware complexity, and therefore the build price, while still maintaining the regulator-mandated isolation between the application processor and the radio processor.

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