

VMware to virtualize Android smartphones for business users - trotsky
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/120710-vmware-virtualizes-lg-android.html

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trotsky
Does anyone know if modern ARM designs include hardware virtualization
extensions along the lines of vt-x and vt-d? It seems like a pure software
virtualization approach along with full device emulation like vmware had to
use in the dark days would be too heavy on a 1ghz/512mb platform. Maybe this
is one of the drivers of the dual core arm adoption.

It's interesting that vmware is clear to say that they'd be guest agnostic -
allowing whatever the user wanted to be emaulated. So while the use case here
is android on android, I could see a real use for running a slimmed down but
industry standard linux guest that could provide a standard dev/test
environment for development. Sure the ui wouldn't be phone oriented, but
plenty of LAMP installations run headless anyway. What other OS's have ARM
support?

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sparky
The Cortex-A15 (Eagle) design will have the option of hardware virtualization
support (
[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/virtuali...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/virtualization-
extensions.php) ). No word on exactly what that means yet.

ARM's lower IPC and frequency may increase the time overhead of pure host-side
virtualization or paravirtualization slower, but ARM is also a less convoluted
architecture from a system software point of view, and may well have less
state to virtualize, so the two may cancel each other out to some extent.

As for other operating systems with ARM support: iOS, several BSDs, RISC OS (
<http://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads> ), Haiku ( <http://www.haiku-
os.org/> ), and all manner of RTOS and other embedded operating systems. Oh,
and Windows CE, Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded for Point of
Service, Windows Phone 7, etc.

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windsurfer
My N900 is dual booting Maemo and Android. It totally makes sense to have two
operating systems on the same phone and I could certainly see many advantages
to being able to quickly switch between the two.

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adambourg
... This is totally stupid.

Issues; 1) Battery life 2) Heavy CPU/Memory Usage 3) Decreased device life
(due to heavy usage) 4) Potential of overheating -- heavy usage combined with
no fans 5) Most smart phones don't support it 6) Most phones have small
storage capacity 7) Who wants their company running all their stuff on their
phone then having to switch to a different VM to use your phone?

Companies stop being cheap and just give the staff that need it a phone with
remote wipe just encase. Problem solved.

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mbreese
I think this is brilliant... but only if engineered correctly. Why carry
around two devices: personal and work? If you have the need for a work phone
with remote wipe, you'd be stuck carrying around two different phones. I'd
much rather have one physical device, but then a second virtual phone built-in
with a different number, address book, and possibly apps. Battery
life/CPU/memory usage should be the same as any smart phone. There are no
moving parts in a phone, so you wouldn't have a problem with life or
overheating.

I think that you're thinking about this in the wrong way... this is a first
step towards a good goal: minimizing the stuff you have to carry in your
pocket. Your personal phone would be the primary phone. But then a managed
"work" phone would be the virtual one. Your company would be in complete
control over the virtual phone, but you could still have your personal email,
apps, etc...

This also could solve the problem of the employee who wants an iPhone, but
their company has standardized on BlackBerries.

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pilom
There is always the battery life issue but a hypervizor that recognized the
limitations of a mobile phone (it will never run something like VMware Unity)
it would certainly be able to perform pretty nicely. Looking forward to this.

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icegreentea
How did they get two numbers at once to work? Does one just run off the SIM,
and the other (presumably business) run off a VoIP/SIP thing? GSM only allows
one number per SIM right?

~~~
ComputerGuru
There is a growing number of dual-sim mobile phones on the market. The chief
players are Samsung and LG, the latter of which is named in this article.

