ARM Community: Meeting the Needs of Global Mobile Workforce with the Nirvana Phone - ARM Community

The telecom and IT industries have for decades made much of technology convergence. Convergence of wireless and terrestrial. Convergence of voice and data. And most recently, convergence of mobile and desktop computing.

Mobile-desktop convergence has led to new form factors, like netbooks and now the iPad, offering intriguing hybrids of mostly existing capabilities. So far, it has created new categories of devices, without eliminating laptops and handsets. True convergence would mean fewer gadgets in users’ lives, not simply introducing new ones.

The explosive growth of smartphones and accompanying applications, increasingly deployed on ARM Cortex™ processors, finally promises to deliver convergence. Today’s smartphones, especially handsets built on Android, offer new options for worker productivity beyond voice, texting, and email. But pocket-size smartphones still limit full productivity due to small screens & keyboards.

Earlier this year, OK Labs and Citrix introduced the Nirvana Phone, a truly converged device concept for enterprise desktop productivity and access to business critical assets in a smartphone form factor. The Nirvana announcement leveraged real input from enterprise CIOs and the mobile workers they support.

Today, workers of all kinds are more likely to find themselves outside of a corporate office setting, rather than in one. Insight Research and the Telework Coalition indicate that in 2010, only nine percent of employees work at corporate headquarters and 67 percent of all workers used mobile and wireless computing.

Supporting this mobile workforce is a real challenge. Today, corporate IT managers strive for uniform, up-to-date fleets of mobile devices, but market realities complicate acquisition, support, maintenance, and upgrades. In addition, mobile workers expect employer-supplied IT equipment but don’t like to use older or clunky devices that don’t fit their lifestyle and impose restrictions on use. Many workers opt for carrying two mobile devices: one for company-sanctioned work, the other for personal communications, gaming, music, videos, etc.

A device that could be used for both work and play would constitute true mobile Nirvana. Transcending the professional/personal divide, it would support multiple accounts/phone numbers; host multiple OSes and/or OS instances (Android, Linux, Symbian, Windows, etc.); dock with full-size a display and a standard desktop mouse and keyboard; and support secure communications and other secure services over wireless networks. And to meet price and performance goals, our Nirvana reference design employs ARM Cortex-A9 silicon.

The good news is that mobile workers and IT managers won’t have to wait long for Nirvana-type converged devices. The Nirvana phone represents a short-term paradigm shift, 12 to 18 months away. Chipset suppliers already ship ARM Cortex processors and publish roadmaps with HD video. Smartphones already possess bridges to desktop peripherals via off-the-shelf Bluetooth and USB.

This “Nirvana Phone” builds on mobile virtualization technology and ARM Cortex memory management and execution models. A virtualized handset can support multiple complete software stacks, for personal and corporate use. In the Nirvana Phone Reference Architecture, personal applications live in a “native” virtual machine (VM). A corporate VM hosts the OS spec’d by IT, offering complete isolation and high security to company applications and access to remote data center assets.



With the Nirvana phone, users can switch between corporate and personal worlds, interacting with applications, while in the office or on the road, using the device’s native display and input scheme. At HQ, in hotel rooms, or in their home office, they can leverage the Nirvana phone’s ARM Cortex-based, PC-class performance & peripheral interfaces – video out, USB, Bluetooth, etc. – to dock with a high-resolution display, full-sized keyboard, and mouse, or even to use the phone as a trackpad. These technologies are all available today.

Mobile virtualization, as well, is not a once-and-future technology, but one that has shipped in over 500 million devices. It supports the Nirvana phone paradigm and a range of other secure services across the mobile ecosystem. Visit www.ok-labs.com to learn more.

The Path to Nirvana
The path to a Nirvana phone is paved with technology that exists today and will roll out in the next generation of smartphone devices. These technologies include

- Integrated full resolution graphics chipsets (VGA to HD)
- Connectivity via WiFi, BlueTooth, USB, and 3G/4G wireless
- Multiple SIM card slots and SmartSIM technology
- CPU power supplied by ARM Cortex-A9, ready for virtualization
- An embedded hypervisor, or as we call it, a Microvisor

Guest Partner Blog:
Steve Subar, President & CEO, OK Labs, With a track record of successful innovation and leadership in the technology industry, Steve Subar has earned a reputation as a seasoned executive who builds winning teams, drives accelerated growth, develops strong customer relationships, and creates shareholder value.

Following his term as National ICT Australia's 2005 Entrepreneur-in-Residence, partnering venture capital investors chose Subar from a select group of over 60 technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to provide the direction and commercial vision leading to a successful spinout. It was from this exercise that Subar selected and spun-out Open Kernel Labs, which he quickly led to success and early design wins.

Subar holds a Bachelor of Science from Miami University's School of Business with a concentration in Computer and Information Technology.

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