National Grid Seminar Series

Rapid Itanium Virtualisation with an Afterburner
Dr. Peter Chubb
Senior Research Engineer
University of New South Wales, Australia
(1500 hrs)

Xen and Intel Virtualization Technology for Itanium Processor Family
Eddie Dong
Technical Lead
Intel Open Source Technology Center, Shanghai, China
(1600 hrs)

04 October 2006 (Wednesday)
Multi-Purpose Hall, Level 1
Institute for Infocomm Research
21, Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Singapore 119613

Abstract of Rapid Itanium Virtualisation with an Afterburner

Most current approaches to paravirtualisation involve rewriting code that uses critical instructions. The person tasked with identifying and rewriting such sections generally finds it a tedious and time consuming prospect.  Moreover, the task has to be repeated every time any privileged code is updated upstream --- and Linux updates the kernel a lot.

An approach developed at UNSW and at Karlsruhe involves using simple tools to rewrite non-virtualisable code automatically.  Only 20 lines of code needed to be changed manually to virtualise Linux so it can run on the XEN hypervisor.  In addition, the resulting Linux outperformed a manually paravirtualised kernel.

But Xen is not the only hypervisor.  We are working on LinuxOnLinux, an after-burnt version of Linux that runs on top of Linux itself.  Current work involves using a user-level device driver framework so that device drivers in the Linux guest can access parts of the underlying machine's PCI bus in a safe manner.

Biodata of Dr. Peter Chubb

	Peter Chubb is a Senior Research Engineer at National ICT Australia and a Research Officer at UNSW. He completed his PhD under Associate Professor John Lions in 1989. Peter worked at Softway Pty Ltd as a consultant and software engineer doing UNIX kernel, security, and embedded work. He joined Gelato@UNSW at its inception in 2002.
Peter started using UNIX in 1979 and has never used Microsoft operating systems for more than a few moments. His home life includes wife Lucy, who also works at Gelato@UNSW, and two small daughters. Peter's hobbies include music (he runs a recorder consort), aquaria (3 tanks at present, no room for more), and fine wines.

Abstract of Xen and Intel Virtualization Technology for Itanium Processor Family

Xen has been recently extended to Itanium Processor Family (Xen/IPF) to run 'para-virtualized' operating systems. These guest operating systems are limited to only those whose source code is available for modifications. Intel has extended the Xen/IPF hypervisor with Intel Virtualization Technology for Itanium (VT-i) to support unmodified guest operating systems (Xen/VT-i).

The speaker will talk about the overall Xen/VT-i architecture design, implementation and challenges used to enabling full virtualization with VT-i. He will present the design of guest TLB, RID remapping algorithm to better support VHPT hash distribution for performance and scalability. He will also describe the challenges encountered in device virtualization to support unmodified OS, such as the split I/D cache synchronization issue.

Biodata of Eddie Dong

Yaozu Dong, Eddie, joined Intel in 1998, had been involved in various embedded system projects for XScale and virtualization projects for Itanium. His recent contribution is to design and implement full virtualization mechanism to enable Xen on Itanium Processor Family (IPF) with hardware assistance which is known as Intel Virtualization Technology.

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This seminar series is organized by the National Grid Office.

Admission is Free. All are Welcome.
Please click here to register by 1500 hours on 03 October 2006.