In January 2009,Asus announced HyperSpace would be incorporated into its next-generation notebooks.[3] Hyperspace was re-launched at the 2009Consumer Electronics Show.[4] The company later announced that HyperSpace has been optimized for the Cortex-A8ARM processor architecture.[5][6]
In June 2010, Phoenix announced that it had sold the HyperSpace intellectual property toHP.[7]
HyperSpace provided aLinux-based environment that can be accessed from startup or using a shortcut from within a Windows environment. Its user interface features a home screen with access towidgets and applications (including aMozilla Firefox-derived web browser, an office suite, andRealPlayer among others).[8][9] Phoenix claimed that HyperSpace could extend a notebook's battery life by 25%.[8]
HyperSpace Dual installs the software in a traditionaldual-boot configuration, where the two operating systems cannot operate simultaneously.
HyperSpace Hybrid configures the system to run Windows and HyperSpace within the "HyperCore"hypervisor, allowing the two environments to operate concurrently, and for users to switch between them instantly. Hybrid required a system supporting Intelvirtualization extensions (VT-x).[10][8]
HyperSpace Dual Resume utilizes non-standardACPI behavior in order to allow for both operating systems to be resident in memory without a hypervisor, although only one OS can operate at a time.[11][12] At startup, abootloaderreserves a segment of memory for HyperSpace and the "OS Steering Module" (OSM, which is derived from theGNU GRUB bootloader), and a larger segment is reserved for Windows. When the user switches operating systems, the existing OS issuspended to RAM by entering ACPI standby (S3) mode, but the OSM then intercepts and modifies the ACPI tables so that the second OS is loaded in the second reserved segment of memory, while keeping the first OS resident in memory.[13]
HyperSpace is stored in ahiddenpartition; the Windows partition is mounted read-only using theNTFS-3G driver, but aUnionFS overlay is applied to theMy Documents folder for partial read-write access. When the user resumes Windows from HyperSpace, adevice driver reads changes to the filesystem via ajournal, and commits them to disk.[13][11]
