Vivante Corporation today announces that its GPU GraphiVisor solution will be featured in a white paper and sponsorship at the Jon Peddie Research Virtualize Conference. GraphiVisor is at the heart of solutions that must be both high-performance and secure, such as in Automotive applications, where feature-rich user experiences must exist in the same system as safety-critical functions with no tolerance for error or tampering. GraphiVisor will work alongside traditional security measures such as 2-step authentication, encryption and network security for truly secure systems in applications where some systems must be designed to have uninhibited, immediate access to the GPU and even a small error-margin is unacceptable, and a new level of hardware isolation is necessary. Vivante IP provides that option with two GPUs that can operate in isolation on one system.

Vivante is excited to be a part of the 2015 Virtualize Conference, with a best practices panel on virtualization options that will include Rick Tewell of Freescale Semiconductor, who heads the Graphics Architecture team for the i.MX product lines. Freescale has adopted Vivante's dual-GPU isolation technology in the i.MX6 Quad to allow one Microcontroller solution for multiple graphics applications that have varying requirements for safety and real-time performance."Vehicles are becoming increasingly reliant on high-tech systems for essential information and safety features, such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, while at the same time consumers demand increasingly impressive user interfaces that seamlessly interface with other user technology," said Wei-Jin Dai, CEO of Vivante Corporation. "GraphiVisor allows Vivante GPUs to maintain isolated, secure systems to satisfy both demands."

In Depth: two dual-GPU resource states
When the GPU is combined, so that all shader cores can operate in one context, the architecture has the full features of a dual-core GPU. When the GPU is virtualized, there is a secure Memory Management Unit (additional state bit) and secure bus interface with secure page tables that determines the type of surface and access patterns allowed. This allows the GPU core(s) to be virtualized across multiple OSes and applications and blocked off from each other. Secure transactions are allowed through a secure path and non-secure Read/Writes can go through the standard MMU and ACE-Lite/AXI interface. The whole process is strictly controlled by the platform and implemented in hardware.

For more information about virtualization and the 2015 Virtualize Conference, visit this page.