A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization

Abstract

Until recently, the x86 architecture has not permitted classical trap-and-emulate virtualization. Virtual Machine Monitors for x86, such as VMware ® Workstation and Virtual PC, have instead used binary translation of the guest kernel code. However, both Intel and AMD have now introduced architectural extensions to support classical virtualization.We compare an existing software VMM with a new VMM designed for the emerging hardware support. Surprisingly, the hardware VMM often suffers lower performance than the pure software VMM. To determine why, we study architecture-level events such as page table updates, context switches and I/O, and find their costs vastly different among native, software VMM and hardware VMM execution.We find that the hardware support fails to provide an unambiguous performance advantage for two primary reasons: first, it offers no support for MMU virtualization; second, it fails to co-exist with existing software techniques for MMU virtualization. We look ahead to emerging techniques for addressing this MMU virtualization problem in the context of hardware-assisted virtualization.

References

1. AGESEN, O., AND DETLEFS, D. Mixed-mode bytecode execution. Technical Report SMLI TR-200-87, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA, 2000.
2. AMD. AMD64 Virtualization Codenamed "Pacifica" Technology: Secure Virtual Machine Architecture Reference Manual, May 2005.
3. AMSDEN, Z., ARAI, D., HECHT, D., HOLLER, A., AND SUBRAHMANYAM, P. VMI: An interface for paravirtualization. Ottawa Linux Symposium (2006).
4. BALA, V., DUESTERWALD, E., AND BANERJIA, S. Dynamo: a transparent dynamic optimization system. In PLDI '00: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2000 conference on programming language design and implementation (New York, NY, USA, 2000), ACM Press, pp. 1--12.
5. BARHAM, P., DRAGOVIC, B., FRASER, K., HAND, S., HARRIS, T., HO, A., NEUGEBAUER, R., PRATT, I., AND WARFIELD, A. Xen and the art of virtualization. In SOSP '03: Proceedings of the nineteenth ACM symposium on operating systems principles (New York, NY, USA, 2003), ACM Press, pp. 164--177.
6. CLARK, D.W., AND STRECKER, W.D. Comments on "the case for the reduced instruction set computer," by Patterson and Ditzel. SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News 8, 6 (1980), 34--38.
7. CMELIK, B., AND KEPPEL, D. Shade: a fast instruction-set simulator for execution profiling. In SIGMETRICS '96: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on measurement and modeling of computer systems (New York, NY, USA, 1994), ACM Press, pp. 128--137.
8. CRAMER, T., FRIEDMAN, R., MILLER, T., SEBERGER, D., WILSON, R., AND WOLCZKO, M. Compiling java just in time. IEEE Micro 17, 3 (1997), 36--43.
9. DEHNERT, J.C., GRANT, B.K., BANNING, J.P., JOHNSON, R., KISTLER, T., KLAIBER, A., AND MATTSON, J. The transmeta code morphing software: using speculation, recovery, and adaptive retranslation to address real-life challenges. In CGO '03: Proceedings of the international symposium on code generation and optimization (Washington, DC, USA, 2003), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 15--24.
10. DEITEL, H.M. An introduction to operating systems (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, USA, 1990.
11. HENNESSY, J.L., AND PATTERSON, D.A. Computer architecture: a quantitative approach. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA, 2002.
12. INTEL CORPORATION. Intel R Virtualization Technology Specification for the IA-32 Intel R Architecture, April 2005.
13. KARGER, P.A., ZURKO, M.E., BONIN, D.W., MASON, A.H., AND KAHN, C.E. A vmm security kernel for the vax architecture. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (1990), pp. 2--19.
14. LEVASSEUR, J., UHLIG, V., CHAPMAN, M., CHUBB, P., LESLIE, B., AND HEISER, G. Pre-virtualization: Slashing the cost of virtualization. Technical Report 2005-30, Fakultät für Informatik, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Nov. 2005.
15. MCGHAN, H., AND O'CONNOR, M. Picojava: A direct execution engine for java bytecode. Computer 31, 10 (1998), 22--30.
16. NEIGER, G., SANTONI, A., LEUNG, F., RODGERS, D., AND UHLIG, R. Intel virtualization technology: Hardware support for efficient processor virtualization. Intel Technology Journal 10, 3 (2006).
17. OSISEK, D.L., JACKSON, K.M., AND GUM, P.H. ESA/390 interpretive-execution architecture, foundation for VM/ESA. IBM Systems Journal 30, 1 (1991), 34--51.
18. PATTERSON, D.A., AND DITZEL, D.R. The case for the reduced instruction set computer. SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News 8, 6 (1980), 25--33.
19. POPEK, G.J., AND GOLDBERG, R.P. Formal requirements for virtualizable third generation architectures. Commun. ACM 17, 7 (1974), 412--421.
20. POPEK, G.J., AND KLINE, C.S. The pdp-11 virtual machine architecture: A case study. In SOSP '75: Proceedings of the fifth ACM symposium on operating systems principles (New York, NY, USA, 1975), ACM Press, pp. 97--105.
21. ROBIN, J., AND IRVINE, C. Analysis of the intel pentium's ability to support a secure virtual machine monitor. In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Security Symposium (2000).
22. SILBERSCHATZ, A., AND PETERSON, J.L., Eds. Operating systems concepts. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, USA, 1988.
23. SMITH, J.E., AND NAIR, R. Virtual machines: versatile platforms for systems and processes. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2005.
24. UHLIG, R., NEIGER, G., RODGERS, D., SANTONI, A.L., MARTINS, F.C.M., ANDERSON, A.V., BENNETT, S.M., KAGI, A., LEUNG, F. H., AND SMITH, L. Intel virtualization technology. Computer 38, 5 (2005), 48--56.
25. WHITAKER, A., SHAW, M., AND GRIBBLE, S.D. Scale and performance in the denali isolation kernel. SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 36, SI (2002), 195--209.
26. WITCHEL, E., AND ROSENBLUM, M. Embra: fast and flexible machine simulation. In SIGMETRICS '96: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on measurement and modeling of computer systems (New York, NY, USA, 1996), ACM Press, pp. 68--79.

Index Terms

• General and reference

  • Cross-computing tools and techniques

    • Performance

• Hardware

  • Communication hardware, interfaces and storage

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Designing software

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Operating systems