Ardence, the global leader in developing software platforms for the on-demand world, today announced a collaborative effort with Intel to accelerate the development of virtual technology in embedded environments.

Ardence said it will begin testing its market-leading embedded software products in conjunction with Intel^®’s Virtualization Technology (VT) in various OEM-usage scenarios to develop performance data that will be used to enhance next-generation embedded systems. In addition, this data will be utilized by the developers of next-generation embedded systems to further understand and promote best practices in order to optimally leverage Ardence and Intel technologies.

Ardence will use technology based on its widely deployed and reliable Phar Lap ETS^® real-time operating system to create a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that supports deterministic real-time behavior and manages the access to the host’s hardware resources. In doing this, OEMs that rely on time-critical applications can integrate Windows-based operating systems with real-time performance (via use of Ardence RTX^®), and real-time management between host and virtual systems (via the VMM).

Intel® Virtualization Technology is part of a collection of premier Intel designed and manufactured silicon technologies that deliver new and improved computing benefits for home and business users, and IT managers.

Virtualization enhanced by Intel Virtualization Technology will allow a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions. With virtualization, one computer system can function as multiple “virtual” systems. With processor and I/O enhancements to Intel’s various platforms, Intel Virtualization Technology can improve the performance and robustness of today’s software-only virtual machine solutions.

Device Edition™ of the Ardence Software-Streaming Platform virtualizes the OS and applications by streaming them on-demand from a server to diskless PC devices from standard TCP/IP networks. This provides devices with unmatched manageability and reliability, while reducing operating costs. Since the PCs and devices are operated without a hard-disk drive they can also be managed remotely via a local or remote server while processing locally so that no additional RAM is needed.

“By marrying these technologies with Intel’s Core^® Duo processors, Ardence is making great strides in providing high-performance industrial grade virtualization solutions for embedded OEMs,” said Stephen Woodard, Senior Vice President, Global Operations at Ardence. “Intel’s support has been instrumental in the development of this initiative and we’re thrilled that they understand the potential that this collaborative effort will provide to our mutual customers worldwide.”

RTX is deployed widely in industrial automation, military and aerospace, simulation, robotics, test and measurement and medical devices. As a COTS-based software solution, RTX can enable the elimination of costly and aging proprietary hardware-based systems. Evaluation versions of RTX and Device Edition can be downloaded at no cost.