Virtualization
We have a number of activities in the area of virtualization and virtual machines (what are they?) This work is done in close collaboration with the Gelato project.
Wombat and Darbat
Wombat was our para-virtualized Linux server on L4. It was the first portable (across architectures) version of a virtualized Linux on L4 (possibly the first portable virtualized Linux at all). It is now commercially supported by our spinout company Open Kernel Labs under the name OK Linux. We have consequently discontinued support for Wombat.
Darbat is related project aiming at running a complete Mac OS X system on top of L4, possibly concurrently with a Linux (i.e. Wombat) system. Rather than straight para-virtualization of the Darwin kernel (consisting of Mach, a BSD kernel and IOkit), the Darbat project attempts to remove Mach completely, replace its functionality by plain L4 mechanisms plus some user-level libraries. The aim is to run Darwin and IOkit in different (unprivileged) address spaces.
Pre-virtualization
Pre-virtualization is a new virtualization technique, which dramatically reduces the engineering cost of para-virtualization while maintaining its performance advantage over pure virtualization. Pre-virtualization, like pure virtualization, retains the original host platform architecture. This is achieved by automating the process of virtualising the guest OS.
Itanium Hypervisors
Our pre-virtualization work supports several different hypervisors on the Itanium architecture. One of them (vNUMA) is our own research projects, others are developed elsewhere.
vNUMA
Virtual NUMA (vNUMA) is a virtual machine monitor that provides a virtual shared-memory multiprocessor system on a cluster. It supports a pre-virtualised Linux as a single-system-image operating system. vNUMA aims to provide easy and efficient migration of legacy SMP applications to a cluster.
vNUMA will be released in the near future.
Xen/ia64
Xen is a widely-used open-source hypervisor. We are targeting Xen for or pre-virtualised Linux and are achieving the same (or better) performance as para-virtualised XenoLinux, with a fraction of the engineering cost.
Our pre-virtualised Linux for Xen/ia64 will be released shortly.
Linux
Linux itself, more commonly used as a guest OS, can serve as a hypervisor, user-mode Linux (UML) is an example of this. While UML is an example of para-virtualised Linux, our Linux-on-Linux achieves better performance with dramatically reduced engineering cost.
People
Current
Past
Publications
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Joshua LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Yaowei Yang, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, Ben Leslie and Gernot Heiser Pre-virtualization: soft layering for virtual machines Proceedings of the 13th IEEE Asia-Pacific Computer Systems Architecture Conference, Hsinchu, Taiwan, August, 2008 |
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Dhammika Elkaduwe, Philip Derrin and Kevin Elphinstone Kernel design for isolation and assurance of physical memory 1st Workshop on Isolation and Integration in Embedded Systems, Glasgow, UK, April, 2008 |
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Gernot Heiser The role of virtualization in embedded systems 1st Workshop on Isolation and Integration in Embedded Systems, Glasgow, UK, April, 2008 |
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Gernot Heiser Do microkernels suck? 9th Linux.Conf.Au, Melbourne, January, 2008 |
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Timothy Roscoe, Kevin Elphinstone and Gernot Heiser Hype and virtue Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, San Diego, CA, USA, May, 2007 |
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Peter Chubb, Matthew Chapman and Myrto Zehnder [para]virtualisation without pain Proceedings of the 8th Linux.Conf.Au, Sydney, NSW, January, 2007 |
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Carl van Schaik and Gernot Heiser High-performance microkernels and virtualisation on ARM and segmented architectures Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Microkernels for Embedded Systems, Sydney, Australia, January, 2007 |
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Geoffrey Lee and Charles Gray L4/Darwin: evolving UNIX Conference for Unix, Linux and Open Source Professionals, Melbourne, Vic, Australia, October, 2006 Slides |
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Gernot Heiser, Volkmar Uhlig and Joshua LeVasseur Are virtual-machine monitors microkernels done right? ACM Operating Systems Review, 40(1), 95–99, (January, 2006) |
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Gernot Heiser, Volkmar Uhlig and Joshua LeVasseur Are virtual-machine monitors microkernels done right? Technical Report PA005103, NICTA, October, 2005 |
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Joshua LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, Ben Leslie and Gernot Heiser Pre-virtualization: slashing the cost of virtualization Technical Report PA005520, NICTA, October, 2005 |
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Matthew Chapman and Gernot Heiser Implementing transparent shared memory on clusters using virtual machines Proceedings of the 2005 Annual USENIX Technical Conference, Anaheim, CA, USA, April, 2005 |
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Charles Gray, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, David Mosberger-Tang and Gernot Heiser Itanium — a system implementor's tale Proceedings of the 2005 Annual USENIX Technical Conference, Anaheim, CA, USA, April, 2005 Best Student Paper Award! |
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Ben Leslie, Carl van Schaik and Gernot Heiser Wombat: a portable user-mode Linux for embedded systems Proceedings of the 6th Linux.Conf.Au, Canberra, April, 2005 |
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Volkmar Uhlig, Uwe Dannowski, Espen Skoglund, Andreas Haeberlen and Gernot Heiser Performance of address-space multiplexing on the pentium Technical Report 2002-1, Computer Science Department, University of Karlsruhe, 2002 |