Phone virtualization using a microkernel hypervisor

Virtualization of multi-core hardware is becoming important in enterprise computing using hypervisors such as VMware or Xen. For desktop phones, virtualization can be used to simultaneously run multiple phone OSes on the same desktop phone, and provide application isolation and security benefits. We introduce the concept of phone virtualization and describe benefits and use cases for users. We then evaluate hypervisor versus microkernel work in the embedded space, and select a well-known embedded microkernel as the virtualization layer. We then present some results to adding a virtualization layer to phone platform representative of enterprise desktop phones. We have ported the OKL4 microkernel to the ARM 1176 and tested it on an ARM emulator with an existing embedded Linux kernel. We discuss use cases, lessons learned, and next steps.