Press Archives - Project ACRN™

Dec 09

Linux Foundation’s ACRN Hypervisor Achieves First Commercial Product Integration with TTTech Industrial

By Project ACRN Blog, Press

ACRN to be used in industrial applications on the Nerve Blue edge computing platform

VIENNA and SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 9, 2020 — IoT Solutions provider TTTech Industrial today is launching the first commercial product based on the Linux Foundation’s ACRN™ hypervisor for the industrial market. With the latest release of its Nerve Blue industrial edge computing platform, TTTech Industrial is making ACRN 2.0 available to customers in a commercial, fully supported software solution that runs on a variety of Intel processors in an array of industrial applications. ACRN Project members include ADLINK, Aptiv, Intel Corporation, LGE and Neusoft Corporation.

ACRN™ is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor built with real-time processing and safety-criticality in mind. When developing ACRN 2.0, the community prioritized three key requirements for hypervisors in the Industrial IoT and edge environments: functional safety, real-time processing and resource sharing for additional flexibility. TTTech Industrial and Intel are actively engaged in the project and have worked together to shape ACRN technology and rapidly integrate it into the Nerve Blue edge computing platform.

“The ACRN community is accelerating embedded development for the integration of heterogenous, real-time applications in edge environments. This milestone really represents what the technical features that set ACRN apart,” said Mike Dolan, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Projects, Linux Foundation. “As the project and integrations mature, we expect even more contributions and innovations to result from this open source collaboration.”

Nerve Blue’s integration of ACRN 2.0 allows it to run PLC software for controlling high-speed machine functions alongside other less time-sensitive software applications on the same hardware platform. Nerve Blue leverages ACRN 2.0’s unique features and optimizations to create special virtual environments that support cycle times down to 500μs for low-latency applications. For example, an injection molding machine containing a standard industrial PC can now be fitted with Nerve Blue software to run its injection pressure control, Human-Machine Interface (HMI), gateway, data analytics, and predictive maintenance functions all on the same device – delivering considerable hardware savings and aiding more efficient machine operation.

“We are very proud to offer the first commercial implementation of ACRN for the industrial market,” says Thomas Berndorfer, Member of the Executive Board, TTTech Industrial. “Nerve Blue already provides users a highly virtualized environment for running machine software on standard industrial PCs. Now with the integration of ACRN 2.0 we have been able to extend our platform to safely and securely host software for controlling the most critical elements within a machine. Nerve Blue together with ACRN 2.0 will make a real impact for our customers as they seek to improve machine efficiency and reduce costs.”

Nerve Blue is available today on Intel Atom processor E3900 series, Intel Celeron processor N3350, and Intel Pentium processor N4200 (Apollo Lake) platforms, 8th Generation Intel Core U-Series (Whiskey Lake) processors. Early next year, Nerve Blue will be available for Intel Atom x6000E Series and Intel Pentium and Celeron N and J Series Processors for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications (Elkhart Lake). A free trial-version of Nerve Blue can be accessed via www.tttech-industrial.com/try-nerve-blue. For a 30-day period, users can experience remote software management and virtualized application hosting for themselves without any need to download special software or set up hardware.

“This collaboration between TTTech Industrial, Intel and Project ACRN will enable the next generation of industrial solutions,” said Brian McCarson, Vice President and Sr. Principal Engineer, Internet of Things Group at Intel Corporation. “The powerful combination of Intel industrial hardware and software platforms and ACRN’s open-source, real-time hypervisor is bringing scalable and reliable solutions to the most demanding real-time applications.”

About the ACRN Project
ACRN is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor that is built with real-time and safety-criticality in mind. It is optimized to streamline embedded development through an open source platform. ACRN Project members include ADLINK, Aptiv, Intel Corporation, LGE, and Neusoft Corporation. To learn more about the project, visit projectacrn.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page:www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer
Story Changes Culture
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

Mar 13

Love0

The Linux Foundation Announces an Open Source Reference Hypervisor Project Designed for IoT Device Development

By Project ACRN Press

ACRN™ is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor with significant code contributions from Intel® Corporation

PORTLAND, Ore. (Embedded Linux Conference), March 13, 2018 – The Linux Foundation today announced a new embedded reference hypervisor project called ACRN™ (pronounced “acorn”). With engineering and code contributions from Intel® Corporation, the hypervisor was built with real-time and safety-criticality in mind, and optimized to streamline embedded development. This project will provide a framework for industry leaders to build an open source embedded hypervisor specifically for the Internet of Things (IoT).

ACRN is comprised of two main components: the hypervisor and its device model, complete with rich I/O mediators. Intel’s experience and leadership in virtualization technology was key to the initial development of this hypervisor solution.

“With project ACRN, embedded developers have a new, immediately available hypervisor option,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “ACRN’s optimization for resource-constrained devices and focus on isolating safety-critical workloads and giving them priority make the project applicable across many IoT use cases. We’re pleased to welcome project ACRN and invite embedded developers to get involved in the new community.”

Developers benefit from ACRN’s small, real-time footprint, which is flexible enough to accommodate different uses and provides consideration for safety-critical workloads. Consolidating a diverse set of IoT workloads with mixed-criticality on to a single platform helps reduce both development and deployment costs allowing for a more streamlined system architecture. An example of this is the electronic control unit (ECU) consolidation in automotive applications. While open source hypervisor options are available today, none share ACRN’s vision of an open source hypervisor solution optimized for embedded and IoT products.

“ACRN will have a Linux-based service OS and the ability to simultaneously run multiple types of guest operating systems providing a powerful solution for workload consolidation,” said Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center, at Intel® Corporation. “This new project delivers a flexible, lightweight hypervisor, designed to take real-time and safety-critical concerns into consideration and drive meaningful innovation for the IoT space.”

ACRN will incorporate input from the open source, embedded and IoT developer communities and encourages collaboration and code contributions to the project. Early ACRN project members include ADLINK®, Aptiv®, Intel® Corporation, LGE® and Neusoft® Corporation. To learn more about the project, visit https://www.projectacrn.org.

Supporting Quotes-

“The lack of open source virtualization solutions for embedded, real-time, and safety-critical systems has been greatly hindering consolidation and to some extent the most interesting forms of fog computing,” commented Angelo Corsaro, Chief Technology Officer of ADLINK Technology Inc. “The release of ACRN as a Linux Foundation project by Intel will be a game changer as it brings the agility and manageability of virtualized environments into embedded and real-time systems. This will be a key enabler toward making the Industrial Internet of Things happen for real.”

“This approach from Intel fits very well within our product roadmap and is a welcomed approach that will meet our customers’ desire to have more open source reference solutions,” said Lee Bauer, Vice President, Mobility Architecture Group of Aptiv. “Aptiv is excited to be a part of this new project, ACRN, and with it usher in a new era of flexibility and scalability for our mobility IoT product solutions.”

“Because ACRN will allow for faster feasibility checking of ECU consolidation, it will benefit our growing vehicle components business,” said Seongpyo Hong, Vice President of LG Electronics. “As a result, we will be able to respond more quickly to OEMs’ customized requirements and will continue to play a key role in contributing to the ACRN project.”

“As Intel’s strategic partner, Neusoft is pleased to join Intel in project ACRN,” said Meng Lingjun, Vice President of Neusoft Corporation and the General Manager of Neusoft Automotive. “ACRN has landed in China’s automotive electronics industry with practical implementation. I believe ACRN can meet the development requirements of IoT technology. We’re pleased to work with open source communities and introduce ACRN into the ecosystem.”

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact

Laura Kempke
The Linux Foundation
pr@linuxfoundation.org