Scalable Hypervisor for Commodity Heterogeneous Multicore Computers: Popcorn Xen
Abstract
Statement of Work:With accelerating core counts, it is anticipated that there is a non-scalable inflexion point for hardware cachecoherence protocols, decreasing the scalability of current, shared memory-based operating systems, which rely on those protocols for memory consistency. Additionally, the accelerating degree of heterogeneity in multicore hardware (e.g., CPUs, GPUs, NICs, various accelerators) is further decreasing hypervisors and operating systems scalability and portability.The PI proposes to redesign current hypervisors for symmetric multiprocessors and the compilation and linking process of virtual machine software to improve scalability on emerging high-core count and heterogeneous multicore computers. The proposed hypervisor, a variant of Xen, and the compiler, based on LLVM, will enable a new capability for migrating hypervisor execution across diverse instruction set architecture (ISA) seamlessly and efficiently withoutthe need of emulators.Objective:The proposed research will investigate and develop a new capability for migrating hypervisor and its guest OS across heterogeneous instruction set architecture (ISA), such as x86, ARM, SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, etc., natively, without the need for emulators. Patterning after their success on developing heterogeneous operating system called Popcorn Linux, the PI will develop Popcorn Xen heterogeneous-ISA hypervisor and its supporting compiler based on LLVM,which will be called Popcorn LLVM.Approach:The PI proposes to redesign current hypervisors for symmetric multiprocessors and the compilation and linking process of virtual machine software to improve scalability on emerging high-core count and heterogeneous multicore computers. A key design principle is to remove the reliance of the hypervisor software on cache coherent shared memory, and to redesign each hypervisor subsystem as a distributed service. They propose to restructure the hypervisor within the shared-nothing design, where each core or group of cores will run a different instance of thehypervisor and instances will communicate through message-passing. Because shared memory (whose cache coherency has been proven to not scale) is not used, they foresee that the hypervisor will have better scalability. Due to the fact that there are multiple instances of the hypervisor, each instance will be natively compiled for a different ISAand will therefore support heterogeneous multicore processors. They call their design repli-hype, and a prototype called Popcorn Xen (based on the Xen hypervisor) will be developed. The proposed hypervisor will support heterogeneous processors. Currently, each virtual machine binary image is compiled for a specific ISA (e.g., ARM), meaning the virtual machine cannot be migrated unmodified onto another ISA (e.g., x86). They propose to develop a compiler and linker that will create virtual machine binaries that can run on heterogeneous-ISA platforms and in whichthe virtual machine???s virtual CPUs can migrate between different-ISA processors. Operating systems that alreadysupport heterogeneous-ISA platforms (e.g., Popcorn Linux) will be supported. Moreover, They will develop the compiler and linker tool so that unikernels can be run on Popcorn Xen. The compiler and linker tools will be based on LLVM and will be called Popcorn LLVM.Overall Merit and ONR Mission/Relevance:This proposed work will further extend the fundamental computing capability for efficient use of future heterogeneous multi-cores, beyond operating system into cloud environment. The proposed work lead the way for efficient deployment of large scale homogeneous multi-cores and future heterogeneous multicores, providing powerful and energy efficientcomputing power, which will be find their way into Navy s systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 26, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141612104
Entities
People
- Antonio Barbalance
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Virginia Tech