Atmel Corporation and Trango Virtual Processors announced the availability of Trango’s Hypervisor for users of Atmel’s AT91CAP9 customizable microcontroller. By creating multiple machine-independent virtual instances of the underlying CAP architecture, Trango’s Hypervisor reduces the time taken to develop CAP application software, and enables existing software to be re-used with minimal modification. Trango’s Hypervisor runs on both the AT91CAP9ASTK Starter Kit for rapid prototyping and on the AT91CAP9A-DK Development Kit for in-depth application development. The joint solution enables customers to benefit from highly flexible customization, faster time to market and significant cost reduction in their CPU and system designs.

Built on Atmel’s CAP that delivers a high degree of hardware customization (peripherals, interfaces and custom logic), the joint solution in addition offers much greater software flexibility. Support for multiple heterogeneous environments allows any Operating System, Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) or stand-alone application to be seamlessly integrated. Proprietary code and open source software can coexist, each in its own secure execution domain, protecting intellectual property investments while simultaneously promoting the use of open source software. Faster time to market, and lower cost is achieved from both a hardware and software perspective. NRE costs using Atmel CAP are significantly lower than for standard cell ASICs, whereas the Trango Hypervisor can bring about a substantial Bill of Material reduction by removing the need for additional processors for applications that usually require multiple CPUs.

The Atmel SoC is quite complete so designers need only focus on the integrated customizable logic. Meanwhile, the Trango Hypervisor allows maximum software re-use, and eases the work of integrating multiple projects. Both components of the solution strongly drive cost reduction and create a highly competitive and innovative product.

Target Applications. The joint solution addresses a wide range of market applications including multimedia devices, video security and industrial applications.

Trango Hypervisor
Virtualization is a software technology that allows developers to create multiple simultaneous execution environments. In practical terms that means that application software executing within each environment behaves as though it was the sole owner and proprietor of the SoC, when in fact execution is occurring on a virtual representation of the underlying hardware: the Trango Hypervisor creates virtual processors and their isolated execution environments within which an Operating System, Real-Time OS or applications can run. The Trango Hypervisor solution is shipped with full set of services (Power Management, Health Monitoring) and a complete SDK and tools suite based on Eclipse.

Atmel’s CAP Customizable Microcontroller
Atmel's CAP is an ARM microcontroller-based system-on-chip with fast local memory, a wide range of industry-standard peripherals and interfaces, and a Metal Programmable (MP) Block that allows the designer to add custom logic.