VMware Demos Two Operating Systems On Mobile Phone

nk497 writes "Virtualisation firm VMware has demonstrated its new mobile virtualisation platform, which allows two operating systems to be used at the same time on a single device. On stage at its European conference, VMware reps used a touchscreen Nokia N800 — more of a tablet computer than a phone — with a prototype of its hypervisor to boot and run both Windows CE and Google's Android, at the same time. The firm has yet to announce when such tech will be found in phones."

Comments

It's about time

[jeffmeden]

I am SO tired of having to dual boot my phone just to get the great internal features of Google Android alongside the application support of Windows mobile. Finally, I can take advantage of the spare storage, memory, and CPU capacity dwelling on my phone and simply run both at the same time! VMware, you have done it again!

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

The mobile stack is implemented as not much more than a serial port, so the virtualization layer will be able to handle it the same way the desktop version would share a modem between multiple guests. That is, it would be trivial.

Re:It's about time

[Wesley Felter]

The real question is whether the hypervisor implements proper looback so that one VM can call the other one. :-)

Anyone else seeing a point in this?

[dremspider]

I can see it being useful for application development, maybe. That is stretching it though because usually you emulate the phone on your computer when developing, rather then using the phone itself. How many people are going to do this? Virtualization is great for somethings, but this I would say is pointless. I want my phone to work, the less the interface is relevant the better the interface is. Why would I want two different interfaces that do the exact same thing? You don't have multiple users with a phone, so that doesn't help. You aren't consolidating phones because everyone is still going to want their own phone. What can I do with this?

Re:Anyone else seeing a point in this?

[Captain Spam]

[...] so all that is needed is for someone to make an Android emulator.

The Android SDK comes with a development emulator for Windows, Linux, and OS X. Does the job quite nicely, I'd say.

Finally

[IceCreamGuy]

Finally! Now I can run a Beowulf cluster on a single cell phone, we've been waiting so long!

Re:Finally

[Hognoxious]

1/(n*1.05) the speed of the origional CPU where n is the number of visualization.

So without and vm = n=0 we get the speed of a single device.

Really? Without a VM it runs at a speed of NaN or DivideByZeroError?

The opposite of news

[TheRaven64]

The N800 is not a mobile phone. It doesn't have any kind of radio capable of communicating with the cellular network. This is just virtualization of a generic ARM device.

Is virtualization of ARM new? Not really, the first time I saw it done was at the XenSummit in early 2007, when Samsung had a Xen-based hypervisor running on an ARM handheld. So, well done VMWare, you've done something that isn't what the headline says and was first done at least two years ago by one of your competitors.

If we're talking about a consumer-grade shipping product, then it's a different matter, but a demonstration is underwhelming. And didn't VMWare demo this about six months ago?