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A mixed environment system is one where a multicore system runs a combination of a real-time operating system and a feature-rich operating system. It’s not a new concept, and there are many examples of products in the industry today, particularly in automotive and high-end industrial. These devices are feature-rich and highly user-interactive, but must respond quickly and reliably to system level events that are driving critical operation of the device.

After presenting earlier this month on the topic at ARM TechCon, I was energized to see the level of interest in heterogeneous processing for mixed environment use cases. What’s new is that the underlying hardware architecture for a mixed environment use case, if implemented correctly, can now be used to solve new design challenges like improving energy efficiency of devices that need to stay connected and provide continuous monitoring of environmental inputs. The device itself does not need to be in a high level state of operation because it is essentially just maintaining a network connection (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, others), processing sensor inputs and is not required to perform heavy processing. But the device must also be able to quickly elevate to a higher state of processing when needed.

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