Congatec, a leader in embedded and edge computing technology, achieves cost, system count, and power savings through system integration utilizing real-time virtualization.

Congatec announced on the 1st that it is equipping all of its latest x86 computer-on-module (COM) products with a hypervisor.

Hypervisors are provided as a simple add-on specification for the company's x86-based COM. Congatec now implements the hypervisor in the firmware and provides it as a standard feature across all x86 COM products, lowering barriers to system integration.

This simplifies real-time virtualization during system integration, not only reducing the number of systems but also lowering cost, size, weight, and power (SWaP).

Andreas Bergbauer, Solution Management Manager at Congatec, said, “By integrating the hypervisor into the product, we enabled easy system integration.” “Congatec provides customers with a differentiated competitive edge by offering the capability to run multiple operating systems, including real-time operating systems, simultaneously and with maximum efficiency,” he said. “Congatec’s modules provide more ‘application-ready’ capabilities than any competitor’s solution, enabling OEMs to lower Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs and accelerate time-to-market. In terms of leveraging system integration benefits, no product has surpassed our Hypervisor on Modules to date.”

As the allocation of various operating systems and applications across multiple cores is optimized, it becomes possible to provide more functions while reducing the number of systems to one.

Furthermore, by utilizing all system resources of the multi-core design, it has increased efficiency and reduced energy consumption. OEMs can efficiently deploy more functions within a single integrated system, and achieve cost savings as the number of required hardware and cables is reduced, while system size, weight, and power consumption are minimized. This enables OEMs to integrate both real-time and non-real-time critical applications in parallel on a single x86 Computer-on-Module.

Furthermore, by utilizing a hypervisor, developers can run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer-on-module. Each operating system is assigned to run on its own core or set of cores and I/O such as PCIe, Ethernet, and USB, ensuring that each operating system operates completely independently of the others. Booting or stopping an operating system does not affect other operating systems in any way. The real-time operation of each module has already been verified, and customers can utilize software and hardware packages suitable for real-time applications through the hypervisor.

The optional hypervisor supports containers and virtual machines (VMs), as well as nested virtualization. Nested virtualization is a technology where virtual machines run on a different hypervisor rather than on physical hardware, enabling complete freedom in virtualization. For example, it allows for the separation of individual workloads to improve reliability, and enables containers or other virtualization solutions to run within the virtual machine.

When functions are distributed across multiple virtual machines, collaboration between virtual machines remains flexible. Operating systems that the hypervisor can immediately support include Microsoft Windows 10 and 11, Debian, Ubuntu, VxWorks, Xenomai, TenAsys InTime distributed RTOS, QNX Neutrino, and RealTime Linux.

Congatec also provides support for other operating systems depending on customer needs. For other operating systems, they can run simultaneously in different execution modes, and combinations of SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) and 32-bit or 64-bit single CPUs are all possible.

This product can also be seen at Embedded World (Hall 3, Booth 241), held in Nuremberg, Germany from April 9 to 11.