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VMware's Dual OS Smartphone Virtualization Plan Firms Up
Sharky2009 writes "VMware is developing virtualisation for smartphones which can run any two OSes — Windows Mobile, Android or Linux — at once. The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time. VMware says: 'We don't think dual booting will be good enough — we'll allow you to run both profiles at the same time and be able to switch between them by clicking a button,' he said. 'You'll be able to get and make calls in either profile – work or home – as they will both be live at any given point in time.'"
Also mentioned in February of this year, but now the company's announced a target of 2012 for mass production.
No, really, why?
The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time.
Are they including a free RAM upgrade kit? And why does this seem to be a hammer in search of non-existent nails?
The biggest problem I have right now: lack of dual SIM (or multi-line) support in almost any phone. I don't need to separate "work applications" from "home applications." I need to have a work number / data plan billed to my company, and a home number (with no data plan) billed to me.
*Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...
Please help metamoderate.
With Microsoft's OS lagging way behind the others in the mobile market, does VMware plan to convince Steve Ballmer that running other companies' OSes side-by-side with Windows Mobile will be a good way to regain market share?
VMware says virtualization can separate personal data and apps from work ones. But if the trend is for smartphone apps to be essentially browser-based, or at least built with Web standards, isn't running a hypervisor and multiple OS instances on a phone the very definition of overkill?
Equally important, if Apple is unwilling to allow even the Flash player onto iPhones, how does VMware figure it's going to convince Apple to run a hypervisor?
Oh wait, the last one is actually easy: VMware's release doesn't even mention Apple. Doesn't mention BlackBerry either. Or Symbian. Funny how this revolutionary, much-in-demand technology specifically excludes the top 85 percent of the smartphone market.
Breakfast served all day!
Uhm...mobile phones already must have a closed source code in them - the radio signaling stack. Mandated by FCC in the case of US.
(oh, if you are throwing away your smartphone because of what you've just learned...could you spend a little time and sent it to me? (only if it's a quad band GSM) I cover the cost of shipping of course)
One that hath name thou can not otter
I know that we are talking specifically about phone based VMs here and that the issue of better OS vs VM has been discussed before, but I cannot understand why we need to virtualize any time an OS is involved. Perhaps I am missing something? If the hypervisor becomes, essentially, the operating system why is it not possible to integrate the process isolation and partitioning features of the hypervisor into the OS in the first place? Are these types of features even really needed on the more limited environments offered by phones (even smartphones)? I agree that virtualization is a valuable technology that has its uses, but sometimes it seems that virtualization and VMs are becoming the proverbial golden hammers (along with the ubiquitous "cloud" computing).
My phone does all that and more, like multi-tasking, runs custom OS roms and doesn't require software to load media nor requires hacking before all functions are available to me. It also has MSC capabilities out of the box.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Just because the poster is unwilling void his warranty to make his phone useful and be price gouged by at&t by a mandated data plan just so he can get some of the worst 3G coverage in the nation hardly makes him an elitist; In fact, I would say he's just smarter / more fiscally responsible than you for using just what he needs with out paying for extra.
I do. Windows Mobile has still got the most useful apps, real multitasking and lots and lots of features and is also nice to develop for. I personally like it more than any other current mobile OS.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Hypervisors are already widely used in mobile phones --- L4 is very popular. I think that this is largely because it allows the vendors to easily reconfigure the user mode address space to abstract over any platform-specific issues involved with a particular phone model. I've also seen some very neat tricks using L4 such as doing on-demand page fetching from a compressed NAND flash device. (In essence, that gives you the equivalent of executable ROM from a smaller, non-mappable flash part.)
So it wouldn't be much of a bigger step to use L4's other hypervisor features to support two different user space modes, each running a complete operating system. This has a lot of advantages to the phone manufacturer. Right now, most smartphones such as the G1 have a big chunky processor running the application OS and a smaller processor running the hard realtime radio stack OS. Using a hypervisor would allow them to run both operating systems on the same processor, with the hypervisor's own scheduler ensuring that the radio stack remains real-time no matter what the user OS is doing. That reduces the hardware complexity, and therefore the build price, while still maintaining the regulator-mandated isolation between the application processor and the radio processor.