BlueVisor: Time-Predictable Hardware Hypervisor for Many-core Embedded Systems

Ian Gray; Neil Cameron Audsley; Ran Wei; Pan Dong; Zhe Jiang; Yan Zhuang

doi:10.1109/TC.2021.3125226

BlueVisor: Time-Predictable Hardware Hypervisor for Many-core Embedded Systems

Ian Gray, Neil Cameron Audsley, Ran Wei, Pan Dong, Zhe Jiang, Yan Zhuang

Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Whilst virtualization was once restricted to large-scale computing platforms, and it is now widely deployed on modern embedded computing systems. This has been driven by the availability of hardware support which alleviates the performance penalties incurred by traditional software virtualization technologies. In the domain of hard real-time systems, specialist virtualization technology which respects restricted timing requirements and constraints can be deployed to allow sharing of processors. However, other aspects of the embedded system (I/O, memory, and communication) are harder to analyse. In this paper, we argue that in order to support real-time virtualization on modern embedded systems, additional system-wide hardware support is required. We propose BlueVisor, an analyzable and scalable hardware hypervisor for many-core embedded systems, which enables time-predictable CPU, memory, and I/O virtualization, as well as supporting a fast interrupt handler, and inter-VM communication. We describe the design and implementation of the real-time hypervisor and demonstrate how a BlueVisor-based virtualization system can be leveraged to meet real-time requirements with significant improvement in system performance, and with a low-performance cost when executing different types of software.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2205-2218
Number of pages	14
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Computers
Volume	71
Issue number	9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2021.3125226
Publication status	Published - 13 Nov 2021

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10.1109/TC.2021.3125226

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Cite this

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title = "BlueVisor: Time-Predictable Hardware Hypervisor for Many-core Embedded Systems",

abstract = "Whilst virtualization was once restricted to large-scale computing platforms, and it is now widely deployed on modern embedded computing systems. This has been driven by the availability of hardware support which alleviates the performance penalties incurred by traditional software virtualization technologies. In the domain of hard real-time systems, specialist virtualization technology which respects restricted timing requirements and constraints can be deployed to allow sharing of processors. However, other aspects of the embedded system (I/O, memory, and communication) are harder to analyse. In this paper, we argue that in order to support real-time virtualization on modern embedded systems, additional system-wide hardware support is required. We propose BlueVisor, an analyzable and scalable hardware hypervisor for many-core embedded systems, which enables time-predictable CPU, memory, and I/O virtualization, as well as supporting a fast interrupt handler, and inter-VM communication. We describe the design and implementation of the real-time hypervisor and demonstrate how a BlueVisor-based virtualization system can be leveraged to meet real-time requirements with significant improvement in system performance, and with a low-performance cost when executing different types of software.",

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AB - Whilst virtualization was once restricted to large-scale computing platforms, and it is now widely deployed on modern embedded computing systems. This has been driven by the availability of hardware support which alleviates the performance penalties incurred by traditional software virtualization technologies. In the domain of hard real-time systems, specialist virtualization technology which respects restricted timing requirements and constraints can be deployed to allow sharing of processors. However, other aspects of the embedded system (I/O, memory, and communication) are harder to analyse. In this paper, we argue that in order to support real-time virtualization on modern embedded systems, additional system-wide hardware support is required. We propose BlueVisor, an analyzable and scalable hardware hypervisor for many-core embedded systems, which enables time-predictable CPU, memory, and I/O virtualization, as well as supporting a fast interrupt handler, and inter-VM communication. We describe the design and implementation of the real-time hypervisor and demonstrate how a BlueVisor-based virtualization system can be leveraged to meet real-time requirements with significant improvement in system performance, and with a low-performance cost when executing different types of software.

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