MultiHype Popcorn: Virtualizing Heterogeneous-ISA Architectures
Abstract
The project proposes to develop MultiHype Popcorn, a virtualization infrastructurethat virtualizes emerging multiprocessor computing architectures comprised of cores of different Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) family (e.g., x86, ARM, RISC-V). This allows the creation of virtual machines (VMs) with heterogeneous-ISA virtual CPUs as well as VMs with homogeneous virtual CPUs, all created out of heterogeneous-ISA physical CPUs, and their seamless coexistence on a heterogeneous-ISA multiprocessor platform. This capability uniquely expands state-of-the-art virtualization to encompass heterogeneous-ISA hardware, enabling a wide range of use cases { e.g., dynamically expand a VM from using low-performance/low-cost virtual CPUs to use high-performance/high-cost virtual CPUs to accommodate workload spikes or meet quality-of-service constraints; dynamically shrink in the opposite direction when workload dips;live-migrate VMs across virtualized CPUs with ISA- and micro-architecturally-different underlying physical CPUs. Additionally, it enables to reap the classical benefits of virtualization such as enhanced isolation, resource sharing, consolidation, transparent fault-tolerance, and full-software introspection.A suite of techniques and mechanisms are proposed to achieve this vision. These include virtualization of resources including heterogeneous-ISA processors, memory, and devices; VM management functionality, inter-hypervisor communication mechanism; and virtual CPU migration functionality, including supporting hypervisor services. Additionally, the project proposes to develop guest operating system support, as an extension to Linux, for hot-plugging heterogeneous virtual CPUs. The project proposes to develop these techniques and mechanisms and construct their implementation in an open-source hypervisor infrastructure such as KVM.The work leverages and extends the proposers past work including the Popcorn Linux operating system and compiler/run-time infrastructure.MultiHype Popcorn will enable Navy software systems, including Navy s legacy software, to be seamlessly supported as virtual machines on commodity heterogeneous-ISA hardware with high scalability, achieve energy efficiency and low-cost, and fully reap the advantages of virtualization on such hardware, in particular, virtualization s security benefits.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 20, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912493
Entities
People
- Binoy Ravindran
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Virginia Tech