Towards hardware embedded virtualization technology

Abstract

Embedded virtualization possesses inherent challenges which differentiate the domain from traditional virtualization application fields such as server and desktop computing. Standard software virtualization solutions have a negative impact, not only on memory footprint and performance, but also on determinism and interrupt latency which are critical for the embedded real-time domain. Thus, efficient embedded virtualization requires domain-specific software and hardware support. This paper presents work in progress results of hardwarebased Hypervisor implementation. The use cases of embedded virtualization are analyzed, justifying the reasoning for hardware-supported virtualization. Architectural and micro-architectural improvements to an ARM v5TE processor are described, demonstrating the performance advantages, and compared against ARM Virtualization Extensions, identifying respective vulnerabilities and providing alternative solutions which enable higher flexibility, minimizing virtualization costs. The research roadmap towards a hardware-complete Hypervisor, based on the presented results, is described.

Interrupt Latency Accurate Measurement in Multiprocessing Embedded Systems by Means of a Dedicated Circuit

“…Table 1 summarizes some of the most relevant works that have performed a timing analysis of an OS or a virtualized environment in embedded systems, including a brief description of the works, the hardware platform, the SW environment where the analysis was carried out, and the tool used for the analysis. Some make a timing analysis of virtualized environments [8,24,25], others analyze the interrupt latency on an OS [26,27], and others analyze the interrupt latency on virtualized environments [28][29][30][31][32][33]. Finally, some propose new tools for analyzing latencies in embedded systems [34][35][36][37][38].…”

The Digital Foundation Platform -A Multi-Layered SOA Architecture for Intelligent Connected Vehicle Operating System

“…For high levels of performance, reliability and security capabilities in platform virtualization, Type Zero hypervisor [22] is used as shown in Figure 9. The Type Zero hypervisor is a bare-metal architecture built with the minimum software components required to fully virtualize guest operating systems and control information flow between guest operating systems [23]. The Type 0 architecture removes the need for an embedded host OS to support virtualization, allowing the hypervisor to run in an "Un-Hosted" environment [22][23].…”

“…The Type Zero hypervisor is a bare-metal architecture built with the minimum software components required to fully virtualize guest operating systems and control information flow between guest operating systems [23]. The Type 0 architecture removes the need for an embedded host OS to support virtualization, allowing the hypervisor to run in an "Un-Hosted" environment [22][23]. The hypervisor handles and controls accesses to the virtualized resources (the hardware).…”