Microcontroller virtualization support for HW seperation

[BalrajRamalingam]

Hello NxP Experts, Is there any microcontroller which supports physical HW separation for zone domains? If yes, is it standard virtualization HW support or specific to NxP ? Who are all the hypervisor vendors ?

[Daniel-Aguirre]

Hi,

Currently, S32x family has an integrated "XRDC" module which helps with the implementation of "domains" inside the same platform. The following is said:

"A domain typically consists of one or more master, along with the memories and peripherals those masters are allowed to access.
Because it is access-controlled, a domain acts as an independent computing environment." [Page 529, S32K3xx Reference Manual, Rev. 5, 09/2022].

The above was extracted from the S32K3 RM, but the same is true for the S32G platform.

Please, let us know if this information was helpful or not.

[BalrajRamalingam]

Hi Daniel,
That's very clear, on following this, What's virtualization support in S32Z zonal controller? Is it same XRDC or any other Virtualization extension unit is there ? I gone through some slides of S32Z into, they say HW supported virtualization support . Could you please describe what's difference between HW supported hypervisor support means ? My assumption is that there's a special HW support in S32Z for domain isolation.

[Daniel-Aguirre]

Hi,

Given that the S32Z is not publicly released, we do recommend to review this directly with your local NXP representative (if you have any).

As to my thoughts, the module should be similar (if not the same) as the ones present in the S32K and S32G.

Please, let us know.