Multi-operating system

• US 9,678,810 B2
• Filed: 09/08/2015
• Issued: 06/13/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/01/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Z124 LLC (Flexis)
• Original Assignee: Z124 LLC (Flexis)
• Inventors: Reeves, Paul E., Reeves, Brian, Teltz, Richard, Tyghe, Christopher, Sirpal, Sanjiv, Reeves, David
• Primary Examiner(s): CONNOLLY, MARK A
• Application Number:
  US14/847,933
• Publication Number:
  US 20160062807A1
• Time in Patent Office: 644 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/14 Handling requests for interconnection or transfer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4068 Electrical coupling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4282 on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45575 Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4411 Configuring for operating with peripheral devices; Loading of device drivers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4418 Suspend and resume; Hibernate and awake
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications

Abstract

A mobile computing device with a mobile operating system and desktop operating system running concurrently and independently on a shared kernel without virtualization. The mobile operating system provides a user experience for the mobile computing device that suits the mobile environment. The desktop operating system provides a full desktop user experience when the mobile computing device is docked to a secondary terminal environment. The mobile computing device may be a smartphone running the Android mobile OS and a full desktop Linux distribution on a modified Android kernel.

Claims

1. A computing system, comprising:

a computing device, comprising;

a mobile operating system running in a first execution environment on a shared kernel, the mobile operating system having a first application framework supporting a first application;

a desktop operating system running concurrently with the mobile operating system in a second execution environment on the shared kernel, the desktop operating system having a second application framework supporting a second application, wherein the second application is incompatible with the first application framework and wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run concurrently on the shared kernel without virtualization; and

a physical memory device,

wherein the mobile operating system is associated with a first frame buffer in the physical memory device and the desktop operating system is associated with a second frame buffer in the physical memory device, each of the first and second frame buffers being associated with respective first and second frame buffer devices in the shared kernel,

wherein the mobile operating system renders an associated first graphical user interface by writing graphics data to the first frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the mobile operating system frame buffer for output by the computing device, and

wherein the desktop operating system renders an associated second graphical user interface by writing the graphics data to the second frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the desktop operating system frame buffer for output by the computing device.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the mobile operating system includes a first set of user libraries in the first execution environment, wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run independently on the shared kernel, wherein the mobile operating system and desktop operating system make system calls through a kernel interface without a virtualized memory or input/output access, and wherein the second application is incompatible with the first set of user libraries.

3. The computing system of claim 1, wherein each of the mobile and desktop operating systems have access to memory and system resources of the computing device and wherein the shared kernel is running on a mobile processor of the computing device.

4. The computing system of claim 1, further including a secondary terminal environment, wherein the desktop operating system is associated with the secondary terminal environment.

5. The computing system of claim 1, further including a secondary terminal environment, wherein the computing device and the secondary terminal environment are connected with a single dock connector that includes a display interface and serial communications interface.

6. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the computing device further includes a first display device, and wherein the first frame buffer is associated with and output to the first display device.

7. The computing system of claim 6, further including a secondary terminal environment, wherein the secondary terminal environment includes a second display device, and wherein the second frame buffer is associated with and output to the second display device.

8. The computing system of claim 7, wherein the second application is displayed on the second display device through the second frame buffer and wherein the computing device selects one of the first and second operating systems as a primary operating system based on whether or not the computing device is docked to another computing device.

9. The computing system of claim 1, the computing device further including a physical storage device, wherein the second execution environment is logically isolated from the first execution environment on the physical storage device.

10. The computing system of claim 1, further including an input device connected to the computing device, wherein input commands from the input device are available to the mobile operating system in the first execution environment and to the desktop operating system in the second execution environment.

11. The computing system of claim 10, wherein the desktop operating system accesses input commands from the input device through the shared kernel and wherein graphics data from an application executing in the mobile operating system is accessed directly by an application executing in the desktop operating system, whereby a surface of the application in the mobile operating system is maintained in a shared memory space and passed to the application in the desktop operating system by passing file descriptors to the shared memory.

12. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the computing device is configured using a boot process that includes the steps of:

starting, in response to a power on event, a boot loader;

establishing, by the boot loader, the first execution environment;

starting, by the boot loader, the shared kernel;

initializing, by the shared kernel, the mobile operating system;

starting, by the shared kernel, the first application framework;

starting, in the mobile operating system, a desktop monitor service;

establishing, by the desktop monitor service, the second execution environment within the first execution environment; and

starting, by the desktop monitor service, the second application framework.

13. A method of providing multiple operating systems on a single physical processor of a mobile computing device, the method comprising:

running a first application on a mobile operating system, the mobile operating system running on a shared kernel and having a first application framework;

running a second application on a desktop operating system, the desktop operating system running concurrently with the mobile operating system on the shared kernel and having a second application framework, wherein the second application is incompatible with the first application framework and, wherein the mobile operating system and desktop operating system make system calls through a kernel interface without a virtualized memory or input/output access, wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run independently on the shared kernel, wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run concurrently on the shared kernel without virtualization, and wherein each of the mobile and desktop operating systems have access to memory and system resources of the computing device;

allocating, by the shared kernel, a first frame buffer memory associated with the mobile operating system;

allocating, by the shared kernel, a second frame buffer memory associated with the desktop operating system;

rendering, by the mobile operating system, the first application in the first frame buffer memory through the shared kernel; and

rendering, by the desktop operating system, the second application in the second frame buffer memory through the shared kernel, each of the first and second frame buffer memories being associated with respective first and second frame buffer devices in the shared kernel, wherein the mobile operating system renders an associated first graphical user interface by writing graphics data to the first frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the mobile operating system frame buffer memory for output by the computing device, wherein the desktop operating system renders an associated second graphical user interface by writing the graphics data to the second frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the desktop operating system frame buffer memory for output by the computing device.

14. A computing device including a computer-readable medium storing instructions for a physical processor, the instructions, when executed, causing the processor to perform steps comprising:

running a mobile operating system in a first execution environment on a shared kernel, the mobile operating system having a first application framework supporting a first application;

running a desktop operating system concurrently with the mobile operating system in a second execution environment on the shared kernel, the second operating system having a second application framework supporting a second application, wherein the second application is incompatible with the first application framework, wherein one of the mobile and desktop operating systems is a host operating system and the other of the mobile and desktop operating systems is a guest operating system, wherein no distinct address space for the guest operating system is set up to execute the guest operating system concurrently with the host operating system and/or no input or output to the guest operating system is simulated during concurrent execution of the mobile and desktop operating systems, and wherein the computing device comprises a smartphone;

rendering, by the mobile operating system, the first application in the first frame buffer memory through the shared kernel; and

rendering, by the desktop operating system, the second application in the second frame buffer memory through the shared kernel, each of the first and second frame buffer memories being associated with respective first and second frame buffer devices in the shared kernel, wherein the mobile operating system renders an associated first graphical user interface by writing graphics data to the first frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the mobile operating system frame buffer memory for output by the computing device, wherein the desktop operating system renders an associated second graphical user interface by writing the graphics data to the second frame buffer device, an external display driver of the shared kernel then writes the graphics data to the desktop operating system frame buffer memory for output by the computing device.

15. The computing device of claim 14, wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run concurrently on the shared kernel without virtualization, wherein the first and second operating systems run independently on the shared kernel, and wherein the second execution environment comprises a chrooted environment.

16. The computing device of claim 14, wherein each of the mobile and desktop operating systems have access to memory and system resources of the computing device, wherein the mobile and desktop operating systems run on the shared kernel without virtualization, and further comprising mobile telephony capabilities.