Virtuosity® is a collection of software components, or distribution, that DornerWorks offers to make it easy to setup and run a virtualized system on their own embedded hardware.
Why would you want to run a virtualized embedded hardware system?
You can find some reasons for that here. Even better, Virtuosity is a distribution of open source software components, so it is free to download and use.
An open source Xen-based distributionYou need more than just a hypervisor (don’t know what a hypervisor is? check out this link) to run a virtualized system. You also need boot loaders, platform-specific system configuration files, operating systems or baremetal applications to run in the virtual machines, file system contents, and configuration files for each virtual machine you want to run.
Virtuosity provides all of that and more! In addition to Xen, the open source hypervisor, guest operating systems like Linux, VxWorks 7.0 and FreeRTOS, and the popular U-Boot bootloader, Virtuosity also provides user documentation and useful “how-to” documents for more advanced topics, along with Yocto recipes to allow you to make your own changes and add new components.
At this point, you might be asking yourself “So what do you get out it? Surely you’re not just integrating, testing, documenting, and releasing Virtuosity out of the goodness of your hearts, right? What’s to stop me from taking Virtuosity and using it directly for my product?”
To answer the last question first, nothing.
It’s all open source; you are free to take Virtuosity and do what you will with it, pursuant to the existing open source licenses of the software components.
So what do we at DornerWorks get out of it?
Well, it turns out that there’s a lot to learn about when using open source components. And while your organization may be expert at one or more of the components, like U-Boot and Linux, you’re probably not an expert, yet, with embedded virtualization. You may not have the time or desire to become experts in embedded virtualization.
Build a business with DornerWorks Virtuosity
Virtuosity is highly customizable, and it can be difficult to pick the right configuration for the different components to work optimally together. Virtuosity reduces this complexity by providing all the necessary components to build a basic system to allow you to quickly prototype a virtualized system, but we’re betting that you’ll want to add features beyond the basic configuration, or that you’ll want to optimize performance in key areas.
When can I get started with this virtualization technology?DornerWorks offers design services to assist you in incorporating virtualization into your software architecture and to add the features or capabilities your product needs. As the provider of Virtuosity, DornerWorks is ideally situated to help you take the next step. Alternately, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Xen and embedded hypervisors, we can help you there too. We offer a Xen Quick Start package, which includes training, help getting your platform up and running with a more advanced configuration, and in depth consultation for topics of interest to you to start you on the path to success.
