VLX for ES Supporting Zilog Zatara™ Processors

Current Point of Sales (POS) terminals are usually based on a proprietary payment Operating System (OS) which makes difficult the addition of new services and capabilities. In particular, the development of additional services in existing designs often translates into long development cycles resulting in higher risk and poor time to market for new product introduction. Moreover, this lack of flexibility creates difficulties to inter-operate with partner environments and finally hinders financial operators in selling new financial services.

The secure introduction of Linux into a POS terminal using virtualization software, enables easy new applications and services support, and facilitates interoperability with existing partner infrastructures. This fast integration of new applications in a secure way provides financial operators with significant added value for increased business and competitiveness.

VirtualLogix™ VLX on Zilog ZA9L Processor

The combined Zilog and VirtualLogix solution allows full usage of Linux on the ZA9L without compromising the security of existing secure payment software.

The first partition called “Secure Zone” can run a PCI PED certified stack including the payment OS and its related applications. The second partition called “Open Zone” is firewalled and can run the Linux kernel with its rich applications portfolio. A virtual Ethernet connection enables communications between the two execution domains.

VLX for Point of Sales Terminals

VirtualLogix’s VLX Real-Time Virtualization for Point of Sales (POS) Terminals enables open software environments like standard Linux operating system to simultaneously run along with a trusted execution environment on the same processor. Without virtualization this would have required a two-processor design to ensure isolation of the execution domains and operating systems.

VLX virtualizes the hardware giving each operating system its own virtual machine, and manages key system resources to isolate the operating systems from the underlying hardware and each other. This approach, combined with a small footprint and the ability to handle real-time performance enables the VirtualLogix virtualization software to be applied to POS terminals.

Based on the assessment conducted by T-Systems, VLX supporting the ARM architecture is compatible with security constraints of the banking industry such as PCI PED.