Reliable device sharing mechanisms for dual-os embedded trusted computing

Abstract

Dual-OS virtualization techniques allow consolidating a trus-ted real-time operating system (RTOS) and an untrusted general-purpose operating system (GPOS) onto the same embedded platform. In order to protect the reliability and real-time performance of the RTOS, platform devices are usually duplicated and assigned exclusively to each operating system causing an increase in the total hardware cost. This paper investigates and compares several mechanisms for sharing devices reliably in a dual-OS system. In particular, we observe that device sharing mechanisms currently used for cloud virtualization are not necessarily appropriate for dual-OS systems. We propose two new mechanisms based on the dynamic re-partition of devices; and evaluate them on a physical platform to show the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.