http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/virtualisation/
Virtualization
We have a number of
activities in the area of virtualization and virtual machines (what
are they?) This work is done in close collaboration with the Gelato
project.
Wombat and Darbat
Wombat was our para-virtualized
Linux server on L4. It was the first portable (across architectures)
version of a virtualized Linux on L4 (possibly the first portable
virtualized Linux at all). It is now commercially supported by our
spinout company Open Kernel Labs
under the name OK Linux. We
have consequently discontinued support for Wombat.
Darbat is
related project aiming at running a complete Mac OS X system on top of
L4, possibly concurrently with a Linux (i.e. Wombat) system. Rather
than straight para-virtualization of the Darwin kernel (consisting of
Mach, a BSD kernel and IOkit), the Darbat project attempts to remove
Mach completely, replace its functionality by plain L4 mechanisms plus
some user-level libraries. The aim is to run Darwin and IOkit in
different (unprivileged) address spaces.
Pre-virtualization
Pre-virtualization
is a new virtualization technique, which dramatically reduces the
engineering cost of para-virtualization while maintaining its
performance advantage over pure virtualization. Pre-virtualization,
like pure virtualization, retains the original host platform
architecture. This is achieved by automating the process of
virtualising the guest OS.
Itanium Hypervisors
Our pre-virtualization
work supports several different hypervisors on the Itanium
architecture. One of them (vNUMA) is our own research projects, others
are developed elsewhere.
vNUMA
Virtual
NUMA (vNUMA) is a virtual machine monitor that provides a virtual
shared-memory multiprocessor system on a cluster. It supports a
pre-virtualised Linux as a single-system-image operating system. vNUMA
aims to provide easy and efficient migration of legacy SMP applications
to a cluster.
vNUMA will be released
in the near future.
Xen/ia64
Xen is a
widely-used open-source hypervisor. We are targeting Xen for or
pre-virtualised Linux and are achieving the same (or better)
performance as para-virtualised XenoLinux, with a fraction of the
engineering cost.
Our pre-virtualised
Linux for Xen/ia64 will be released shortly.
Linux
Linux itself, more
commonly used as a guest OS, can serve as a hypervisor, user-mode Linux
(UML) is an example of this. While UML is an example of
para-virtualised Linux, our Linux-on-Linux
achieves better performance with dramatically reduced engineering cost.
People
Current
Past
Publications
 |
 |
Matthew
Chapman and Gernot Heiser
vNUMA: A virtual shared-memory multiprocessor
Proceedings of the 2009 USENIX Technical Conference, San
Diego, CA, USA, June, 2009
|
|
|
 |
Matthew
Chapman
vNUMA: Virtual shared-memory multiprocessors,
PhD Thesis, University of NSW, Sydney 2052, Australia, 2009
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser
Many-core chips — a case for virtual shared memory
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Managed Many-Core Systems,
Washington, DC, USA, March, 2009
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser
Hypervisors for consumer electronics
Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Consumer Communications and
Networking Conference, Las Vegas, NV, USA, January, 2009
|
|
|
|
André
Hergenhan and Gernot Heiser
Operating systems technology for converged ECUs
6th Embedded Security in Cars Conference (escar),
Hamburg, Germany, November, 2008
|
|
|
|
Joshua
LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Yaowei Yang, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb,
Ben Leslie and Gernot Heiser
Pre-virtualization: Soft layering for virtual machines
Proceedings of the 13th IEEE Asia-Pacific Computer Systems
Architecture Conference, Hsinchu, Taiwan, August, 2008
Best Paper Award!
|
|
|
|
Dhammika
Elkaduwe, Philip Derrin and Kevin Elphinstone
Kernel design for isolation and assurance of physical
memory
1st Workshop on Isolation and Integration in Embedded Systems,
Glasgow, UK, April, 2008
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser
The role of virtualization in embedded systems
1st Workshop on Isolation and Integration in Embedded Systems,
Glasgow, UK, April, 2008
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser
Do microkernels suck?
9th Linux.Conf.Au, Melbourne, January, 2008
|
|
|
|
Timothy
Roscoe, Kevin Elphinstone and Gernot Heiser
Hype and virtue
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating
Systems, San Diego, CA, USA, May, 2007
|
|
|
|
Peter
Chubb, Matthew Chapman and Myrto Zehnder
[para]virtualisation without pain
Proceedings of the 8th Linux.Conf.Au, Sydney, NSW,
January, 2007
|
|
|
|
Carl
van Schaik and Gernot Heiser
High-performance microkernels and virtualisation on ARM
and segmented architectures
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Microkernels
for Embedded Systems, Sydney, Australia, January, 2007
|
|
|
|
Geoffrey
Lee and Charles Gray
L4/Darwin: Evolving UNIX
Conference for Unix, Linux and Open Source Professionals,
Melbourne, Vic, Australia, October, 2006
Slides
|
|
|
|
Myrto
Zehnder and Peter Chubb
Virtualising PCI
Gelato ICE, Singapore, October, 2006
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser, Volkmar Uhlig and Joshua LeVasseur
Are virtual-machine monitors microkernels done right?
ACM Operating Systems Review, 40(1), 95–99, (January,
2006)
|
|
|
|
Gernot
Heiser, Volkmar Uhlig and Joshua LeVasseur
Are virtual-machine monitors microkernels done right?
Technical Report PA005103, NICTA, October, 2005
|
|
|
|
Joshua
LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, Ben Leslie and
Gernot Heiser
Pre-virtualization: Slashing the cost of virtualization
Technical Report PA005520, NICTA, October, 2005
|
|
|
|
Matthew
Chapman and Gernot Heiser
Implementing transparent shared memory on clusters using
virtual machines
Proceedings of the 2005 USENIX Technical Conference,
Anaheim, CA, USA, April, 2005
|
|
|
|
Charles
Gray, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, David Mosberger-Tang and Gernot
Heiser
Itanium — a system implementor's tale
Proceedings of the 2005 USENIX Technical Conference,
Anaheim, CA, USA, April, 2005
Best Student Paper Award!
|
|
|
|
Ben
Leslie, Carl van Schaik and Gernot Heiser
Wombat: A portable user-mode Linux for embedded systems
Proceedings of the 6th Linux.Conf.Au, Canberra, April,
2005
|
|
|
|
Volkmar
Uhlig, Uwe Dannowski, Espen Skoglund, Andreas Haeberlen and Gernot
Heiser
Performance of address-space multiplexing on the Pentium
Technical Report 2002-1, Computer Science Department, University of
Karlsruhe, 2002
|
|
