Paravirtualization is an important I/O virtualization technology since it uniquely provides all of the following benefits: the ability to share the device between multiple VMs, support for legacy devices without virtualization hardware, and high performance. However, existing paravirtualization solutions have one main limitation: they only support one I/O device class, and would require significant engineering effort to support new device classes and features. In this paper, we present Paradice, a solution that vastly simplifies I/O paravirtualization by using a common paravirtualization boundary for various I/O device classes: Unix device files. Using this boundary, the paravirtual drivers simply act as a classagnostic indirection layer between the application and the actual device driver.We address two fundamental challenges: supporting cross-VM driver memory operations without changes to applications or device drivers and providing fault and device data isolation between guest VMs despite device driver bugs. We implement Paradice for x86, the Xen hypervisor, and the Linux and FreeBSD OSes. Our implementation paravirtualizes various GPUs, input devices, cameras, an audio device, and an Ethernet card for the netmap framework with~7700 LoC, of which only~900 are device class-specific. Our measurements show that Paradice achieves performance close to native for different devices and applications including netmap, 3D HD games, and OpenCL applications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.