Status of KVM on PowerPC

KVM Forum 2008

Christian Ehrhardt
IBM Linux Technology Center

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Agenda

Milestones reached
Server vs. embedded virtualization
Major requirements
Planned milestones

IBM Linux Technology Center

Milestones reached
No hardware support on PowerPC 440
Compress privilege levels
Implies instruction emulation

Shadow TLB
Interrupt delivery

Virtio support
pci-emulation
virtio-block
virtio-net

IBM Linux Technology Center

Milestones reached
Performance measurement
Exit statistics
Profile host

MMU optimizations
Strategic TLB selection
Experimental large page support

Paravirtualized IRQ handlers

Native IRQ handlers have a lot of privileged instructions
Important to speed up non virtualization assisted hardware
Device tree to announce hypervisor features

IBM Linux Technology Center

Agenda

Milestones reached
Server vs. embedded virtualization
Major requirements
Planned milestones

IBM Linux Technology Center

Server vs. Embedded virtualization

Different consolidation scenarios
Classic utilization consolidation not important
Consolidation interesting when combining virtualization&emulation
AMP to SMP migration
Support discontinued HW along new SW stack

Uniting formerly exclusive SW

Non-RT e.g.:
Visualization
Management
Control
Linux

RT app

Visualization
Management
Control

core
proprietary
kernel

RT
app
proprietary
kernel

Linux/KVM
core

core

core

IBM Linux Technology Center

Server vs. Embedded virtualization

Multicore enablement
Port old SW with minimal investment
Allows running new SW along in host or other guests

legacy
app
legacy
kernel
app
core

legacy
app

app

legacy
kernel

app

app

multicore kernel
host kernel

core

core

core

IBM Linux Technology Center

core

Server vs. Embedded virtualization

Secure monitoring
Allowing complex watchdogs
Protect and hide monitoring software

Sandboxing untrusted code

network

network
app

monitor
kernel
HW

app

monitor

kernel
host kernel
HW

IBM Linux Technology Center

Server vs. Embedded virtualization

Shared use cases but with different focus
Hot standby to save power&space and for debugging
Flexible resource management for QOS

app

app

HW

HW
app

backup
app
HW

backup
app

host kernel
HW

IBM Linux Technology Center

Agenda

Milestones reached
Server vs. embedded virtualization
Major requirements
Planned milestones

IBM Linux Technology Center

10

Major requirements
Reduce performance tradeoff
Hardware virtualization support

RT support
RT is important in embedded market
Leverage various RT Linux work

Standardization
Power.org TSC Embedded hypervisor
several hypervisors and operating systems to coordinate
ABI/API coordination

IBM Linux Technology Center

11

Agenda

Milestones reached
Server vs. embedded virtualization
Major requirements
Planned milestones

IBM Linux Technology Center

12

Planned milestones
More functionality
Merge exit accounting with kvmtrace
Support gdb stub
Leverage RT-Linux

Hardware support is coming

Power ISA 2.06 scheduled for 4Q 2008
We will exploit that instructions to reduce our performance tradeoff
Support when hardware arrives

Standardization
Push TSC results to ePAPR

IBM Linux Technology Center

13

Questions

IBM Linux Technology Center

14