Hi, I am retired due to health problems and I am starting to deal with the topic of virtualization in IoT, "Connected Devices" "Embedded Systems". Specifically i am looking for information about XEN as a hypervisor type 1, also called "bare metal" in an embedded system. This is to separate this topic from those used of hypervisors in Servers or Workstations. My research has shown that using virtualization as is XEN, is a must for achieving the security goals as they are today reflected in automotive, aviation and military embedded applications already in the past. But wearables and other consumer IoT devices have similar security goals as the applications in the 3 fields mentioned above. Specially after the revelations from whistle blowers.
My knowledge is so far limited to i.MIX8 devices and that ARM has i.e. in their recent R52 added hardware to support virtualization. Ideally I would be happy to find out if somebody has looked at the RaspBerry Pi 3B that has the proper version of the ARM instruction set. In the first half of November 2016 the "Electronica 2016" trade show takes place in Munich. I hope I will find interesting information there.
I am starting to work myself into the bare metal hypervisor topic setting up a second system with an ASUS P6T WS motherboard and a Xenion 5550 whose hardware does have the support for efficient virtualization.
Here a link where interesting information can be found!

 

I've looked at some of the RPi3 virtualization capabilities. ARMv7 and ARMv8 both have some (VMs run in non-secure EL0/EL1, and the Hypervisor in EL2) hardware for a baremetal hypervisor. The main problem with ARM visualization is which virtual-platform do you use? Unlike the X86 core "platform" there is no standard ARM baremetal "platform". Each SoC vendor has their own special IP added to the ARM mix that would also need emulation code for full visualization. For the RPi running Linux the "Device Tree" method is used to dynamically generate boot firmware to handle the needs of unique device configuration and initialization but every different type of ARM device needs it's own special 'Device Tree'. With ARMv8 the Linux kernel can run at EL2 (Hypervisor level) to provide KVM support for guest kernels.

 

You got the point! I am going my first steps with hypervisor type 1 using an available motherboard as presented in the last paragraph of my first publication. This was the reason I asked if anybody has dealt with the RaspBerry Pi 3B that has a SoC with 4 ARMcores that have the ARMv8. But this does not have to mean that the Qualcomm SoC has implemented the support ARM gives for Virtualization. But the Raspis at least represent a huge volume of devices out there with a common implementation. So if the functionality for virtualization support is given (?) it could be a platform to pursue!

 

The RPi3 uses a Cortex-A53 CPU with virtualization extensions but it does not have GICv2 with virtualization support.

You may want to look at this: http://xhypervisor.org/index.php?page=home

 

Thx nsapook. I have already been looking into the xvisor websites. So far it looks like the i.MX8, due to be released in 2017 is the first adequate device I have been able to identify that claims to have the hardware in place for Trustedzone from ARM. In less then 2 weeks the electronica2016 trade show starts here in Munich-. I will try to address the nxp people to see if I can have an NDA issued for me to get my hands on the material. Otherwise I´ll be patient!