Virtualizing the Embedded World: Vista Over Linux in a Cell
Phone? Motivation for Running a Hypervisor on Embedded Systems
While you probably won't run Vista as a virtual machine on your
cell phone, there are many viable use cases of virtualization
for embedded applications. The most simplest, cheapest, feature
rich is using Linux and KVM. Servers and desktops are not alone,
virtualization is also a perfect fit for embedded devices too.
Virtualization benefits are well understood for the traditional
server consolidation purposes. Hypervisors, aka virtual machine
monitors (VMM) are common in almost every data center, saving
equipment, power and management costs. Embedded applications,
ranging from terabit routers, hardware appliances, media-rich
set-top boxes to cellular phones and media players can all
benefit from virtualization. At a glance it may looks like an
over kill to run virtual machines on embedded systems (see
Figure 1). Embedded systems might be resource limited, having
limited memory/CPU/latency/