On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Matthew Hicks <[email protected]> wrote:

> This is a bad idea.  You want to make the processor fully
> virtualizable.  This requires the ability for a hypervisor to
> interpose on an unmodified operating system.  For this to work, the
> hypervisor changes the operating system privilege to 0 (user mode) and
> when the operating system accesses or modifies privileged state, an
> exception triggers and the hypervisor takes over.  With your proposal,
> the hypervisor would never know and the system would collapse.
>

Shouldn't the hypervisor be implemented with another SR bit, or another SPR
altogether?  Eg, a HM (hypervisor mode) bit?

I don't see how pushing the OS into userspace would work.  How can the OS
protect user processes from accessing each other's memory, for instance?

-Pete
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