research-article

The evolution of an x86 virtual machine monitor

Authors:

Alex Garthwaite,

Jeffrey Sheldon,

Pratap SubrahmanyamAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 44, Issue 4

Pages 3 - 18

https://doi.org/10.1145/1899928.1899930

Published: 13 December 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Twelve years have passed since VMware engineers first virtualized the x86 architecture. This technological breakthrough kicked off a transformation of an entire industry, and virtualization is now (once again) a thriving business with a wide range of solutions being deployed, developed and proposed. But at the base of it all, the fundamental quest is still the same: running virtual machines as well as we possibly can on top of a virtual machine monitor.

We review how the x86 architecture was originally virtualized in the days of the Pentium II (1998), and follow the evolution of the virtual machine monitor forward through the introduction of virtual SMP, 64 bit (x64), and hardware support for virtualization to finish with a contemporary challenge, nested virtualization.

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The evolution of an x86 virtual machine monitor

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 44, Issue 4

December 2010

152 pages

ISSN:0163-5980

DOI:10.1145/1899928

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 Authors.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 December 2010

Published in SIGOPS Volume 44, Issue 4

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3670105.3670188
Narayan SGarfinkel TTaram MRudek JMoghimi DJohnson EFallin CVahldiek-Oberwagner ALeMay MSahita RTullsen DStefan DAamodt TJerger NSwift M(2023)Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFIProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 310.1145/3582016.3582023(266-281)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582016.3582023
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Cerveira FKocsis IBarbosa RMadeira HPataricza A(2018)Exploratory Data Analysis of Fault Injection Campaigns2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)10.1109/QRS.2018.00033(191-202)Online publication date: Jul-2018
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Bugnion ENieh JTsafrir D(2017)Hardware and Software Support for VirtualizationSynthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture10.2200/S00754ED1V01Y201701CAC03812:1(1-206)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2017
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Dong YXue MZheng XWang JQi ZGuan HLu SRiedel E(2015)Boosting GPU virtualization performance with hybrid shadow page tablesProceedings of the 2015 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/2813767.2813806(517-528)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2015
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