Hypervisor

Why choose General Dynamics?

With more than 2 billion devices already in the global marketplace, General Dynamics provides device OEMs, mobile network operators (MNOs), semiconductor suppliers, and other deployers with a proven solution - a safe choice for mission-critical software.

Building on two decades of innovation

The origins of Open Kernel Labs reaches back 20 years to research at IBM's esteemed T. J. Watson Research Center and later National ICT Australia - NICTA. NICTA served as the incubator for the creation of Open Kernel Labs, which operated as the commercialization vehicle for OKL4 and other products. General Dynamics acquired Open Kernel Labs in 2012, and continues a strong partnership with NICTA that continues to this day.

General Dynamics’ Collaborative Approach

General Dynamics takes a highly collaborative approach to working with customers. This approach combines General Dynamics software products with professional services from our own Engineering team, and our certified third-party developers. Based on General Dynamics experience helping customers deploy OKL4 in more than 2 billion mobile phones to date, General Dynamics offers a proven path from evaluation to successful integration and deployment of General Dynamics software products.

Open for Business with Open Source

Developers rely on our products to implement trusted and secure mobile computing. General Dynamics believes that transparency engenders trust and so embraces open source software and community-based development. seL4 is a prime example of successful open-source software. Product source code is freely accessible to developers, decision makers and enthusiasts for inspection, evaluation, documentation, and development.

Products & Services

General Dynamics offers a diverse product line designed to provide complete solutions, and meet a wide range of mobile device and embedded system requirements. The combination of General Dynamics software products and services provide mobile virtualization solutions, which address a range of business needs and opportunities facing device OEMs, mobile network operators, and semiconductor suppliers.

General Dynamics software products include the OKL4 Hypervisor as well as complementary products -- OS Support Packages for versions of popular mobile OSes, including OK:Android, OK:Linux, OK:Symbian, and OK:Windows Mobile. General Dynamics OS Support Packages enable an operating system environment to run in a cell provided by the OKL4 Hypervisor using its Secure HyperCell^TM Technology.

Software Products

• OKL4 Hypervisor
• OK:Linux
• OK:Android
• OK:Symbian
• OK:Windows

Services

• Discovery Services
• Engineering Services
• Quick Start
• Training
• Installation Services
• Tech Support

Solutions

• Mass-Market Smartphone
• Quicker Development
• Branded Services Integration
• New Platform Adoption
• BYO Device to Work
• Secure Services
  
  To complement its software product line, General Dynamics offers a range of services in the Virtualization Integration Practice (VIP). Based on General Dynamics experience helping customers deploy OKL4 in 1.4 billion mobile phones to date, General Dynamics VIP Services offers a proven path from evaluation to successful integration and deployment of General Dynamics software products.

OKL4 Hypervisor

Our flagship secure kernel, the OKL4 Hypervisor, provides the foundations you need to build secure, fast, and resilient systems. The OKL4 Hypervisor provides mobile virtualization, componentization, security, and flexible policy enforcement in a small footprint that is easy to use. Deployed in over 2 Billion devices worldwide, the OKL4 Hypervisor has been used in embedded, mobile, IoT, automotive, defense, medical, industrial, and enterprise applications.

The microkernel-based OKL4 Hypervisor offers device OEMs unique Secure HyperCell Technology, providing an ideal combination of reliability, security, performance, and resource efficiency for use in mobile phones, netbooks, consumer electronics, and other embedded system applications. OKL4 offers device OEMs a range of features and capabilities, with associated benefits:

1. Virtualization: Using unique Secure HyperCell Technology, OKL4 can host VMs consisting of complete OSes and software stacks, down to stand-alone device drivers or other bare metal code in individual, isolated cells. Code inside a cell executes in unprivileged mode, with hardware memory protection isolating cells from one another. Fine-grained control over resource allocation, communication, and security makes development easier, software more reliable, and systems more secure.

2. Microkernel-based: By building on microkernel architecture, the OKL4 Hypervisor offers device OEMs not only high-performance mobile virtualization, but opportunities to segment applications into smaller, more secure, and more manageable software components. This results in software that is easier to develop, more reliable, and more secure.

3. Resource management: OKL4 manages cell resources independently, allocating system resources to single cells or shared among cells. The ability to closely match resources to the specific requirements of each cell provides optimal implementation, which enables the software to make the greatest possible use of the underlying hardware.

4. Lightweight components: OKL4 components and device drivers are not tied to a specific mobile phone OS. This independent approach provides independent development and reuse of key system software, reducing the size of the development effort and the time required.

5. Customizable APIs: OKL4 lightweight execution environments feature customizable APIs, enabling software-targeting legacy operating systems or industry standard APIs like POSIX to be reused without being ported.

6. Real-time capability and low performance overhead: OKL4 performance optimizations target context switching, IPCs, and other characteristics with significant impact on real-time response and throughput. OKL4 performance enables a single processor to simultaneously meet the needs of real-time services and rich applications, which in turn enables the use of a lower cost SoC.

7. Small memory footprint: OKL4's modest memory requirements make OKL4 easy to include even within the resource constraints of mobile phones and other embedded systems.

8. Minimal Trusted Computing Base (TCB): OKL4 architecture presents a small TCB for subsystems or services with higher security requirements. A smaller TCB means a higher level of security.

9. Extensible and maintainable: OKL4 is written in C and built from a modular common code base, enabling General Dynamics Broadband to deliver enhancements and extensions over time.

10. Guest OS support: General Dynamics Broadband systematic and efficient approach to paravirtualizing guest OSes for use with OKL4 has resulted in support for a wide range of OSes and application environments, including RTOSes, multiple Linux distributions, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. Whatever the guest OS requirements, an General Dynamics Broadband solution can be provided.

Hardware / Device support

General Dynamics supports the OKL4 Hypervisor on a variety of processor architectures and processor cores. General Dynamics Broadband also offers customer-specific development services to address additional requirements, from crafting device drivers to building new board support packages. Contact General Dynamics at OKL4hypervisor@gd-ms.com for further information on standard hardware support and customer-specific hardware support services.

Solutions

Combining Software Products and VIP Services, General Dynamics works with customers to deliver solutions that address critical business issues. Within the mobile/wireless space this includes solutions for device OEMs, MNOs, and semiconductor suppliers.

For Device OEMs

Quicker Development: Easier integration and increased reuse gets new products to market sooner

Mass-Market Smartphones: Lower-cost phones with open application support offer unmatched benefits to mobile network operators (MNOs) and corresponding sales gains to device OEMs

New Platform Adoption: Being among the first-to-market with support for a new and in-demand application platform like Android creates market share and profit margin

Branded Service Integration: Integrating MNO services with handsets enables easier to realize time-to-market and cost benefits

M2E and Nirvana Phone: Serving a sizable and largely-untapped market for a product line that benefits from a "bring your own device" option (with personal and corporate worlds on one device); a choice that appeals to consumers AND meets enterprise IT security requirements for supporting mobile workers

Security: By providing foundational support for security, device OEMs create devices better able to meet the security requirements of mobile phone users, MNOs, and other service providers

For MNOs

Branded Service Integration: Enables branded service integration applicable to a wider range of mobile devices for MNO services, with increased portability and management, to realize quicker time-to-market and cost benefits

Mass-Market Smartphones: Lower cost phones with open application support give more customers access to applications that increase data users and annual revenue per user (ARPU)

New Platform Adoption: Device OEMs with OKL4-based products can more quickly integrate the latest application platform, such as Android, to deliver new devices that drive customer acquisition and enable new services

M2E and Nirvana Phone: A product line enabling a "bring your own device" option (with personal and corporate worlds on one device) that appeals to mobile phone users AND meets enterprise IT requirements for supporting mobile workers taps a substantial and largely-unmet need in the market

Security: Whether the goal is supporting mobile finance or providing secure enterprise use, the OKL4 Hypervisor enables MNOs to more easily meet a range of security requirements within a single device

For Semiconductor Suppliers

Quicker Development: Device OEMs require delivery of integrated hardware/software solutions. Quicker development enables easier integration and increased reuse, which shortens time to revenue

New Platform Adoption: Being among the first-to-market with support for a new and in-demand application platform like Android creates market share and greater profit margin. New platform adoption provides the tools to speed time-to-market

Mass-Market Smartphones: The mobile ecosystem will benefit tremendously as the cost decreases for phones with open application support. Combine lower-cost SoCs with a single ARM processor and mobile virtualization to take advantage of this market opportunity

Security: When the semiconductor supplier solution includes software components that must be secure, the ability to more easily meet a range of security requirements offers meaningful differentiation when selling to device OEMs looking for more complete platforms

Value engenders value

Mobile virtualization adds value across the mobile device ecosystem. Semiconductor suppliers with OKL4 Hypervisor integration bring more value to device OEMs. Device OEMs creating OKL4-based handsets offer more value to MNOs. And MNOs deploying OKL4-based handsets, sustain ARPUs from data services as more consumers and mobile workers carry open-OS phones and use them as enterprise endpoints.No matter the location or role of a company within the mobile ecosystem, General Dynamics offers both technical and business value with the OKL4 Hypervisor.

seL4

General Dynamics and NICTA, Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Research Center of Excellence have partnered to offer the seL4 microkernel and formal mathematical proofs as open-source software. seL4 provides a secure software foundation for securing the world's next generation products, and is the world's first operating-system kernel with an end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security. seL4 is mathematically proven to be ‘bug free' and impervious to buffer overflows, a type of cyber-attack that inserts malicious code into a software system.

For further information please visit https://sel4.systems