A Novel Hardware Assisted Full Virtualization Technique

Abstract

Virtual machine technology is rapidly emerging as an important component of future computer systems. Full virtualization with dynamic binary translation outperforms paravirtualization and hardware assisted virtualization in x86 CPU virtualization. Previous full virtualization techniques are implemented in software without any hardware assist. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a novel hardware assisted full virtualization technique-dynamic binary translation in DIMM (DBTIM). We integrate a reconfigurable dynamic binary translation chip into a DIMM. DBTIM could be inserted to the mainboard as a normal DIMM, hence easily making the host CPU virtualizable. We also implement a DBTIM prototype on FPGA. We analyze our new approach and compare it with other modern virtualization techniques. We demonstrate that the new technique in this paper could provide full virtualization to all kinds of CPU architectures, including x86, with better virtualization capability, better software and hardware compatibility, better performance and lower overheads.