Composition Kernel: A Multi-core Processor Virtualization Layer for Rich Functional Smart Products

Nakajima, Tatsuo; Kinebuchi, Yuki; Courbot, Alexandre; Shimada, Hiromasa; Lin, Tsung-Han; Mitake, Hitoshi

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-16256-5_22

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…SPUMONE (Software Processing Unit, Multiplexing ONE into two or more) is a thin software layer for multiplexing a single physical CPU core into multiple virtual cores [7,9]. The current target processor of SPUMONE is the SH4a architecture, which is very similar to the MIPS architecture, and the processor is adopted in various Japanese embedded system products.…”

Section: Fig 4: Spumone Basic Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal and spatial isolation in a virtualization layer for multi-core processor based information appliances

Nakajima¹,

Kinebuchi²,

Shimada³

et al. 2011

16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)

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A virtualization layer makes it possible to compose multiple functionalities on a multi-core processor with minimum modifications of OS kernels and applications. A multi-core processor is a good candidate to compose various software independently developed for dedicated processors into one multi-core processor to reduce both the hardware and development cost. In this paper, we present SPUMONE, which is a virtualization layer suitable for developing multi-core processor based-information appliances. I IntroductionMulti-core processors are being increasingly adopted for embedded systems because they improve performance, power consumption and lower development cost. Composing multiple operating systems on a multi-core processor enhances the reusability of software when developing rich functional information appliances. Multiple OS environments enable the product to use two versions of an operating system at the same time. In order to build multiple OS environments, a virtualization layer specialized for embedded systems is necessary 1 , since most of processors for embedded systems support only two protection levels, and there is no hardware support for virtualization. In traditional approaches, an OS kernel runs at the user level to isolate the respective OS kernels to increase reliability, but this approach requires heavy modifications to the guest OSes if there is no proper hardware virtualization support that rarely exists in embedded systems. Therefore existing virtualization solutions are not preferred by the embedded system industry.In [1], Armand and Gien present several requirements for a virtualization layer to be suitable for embedded systems:i.It should run an existing operating system and its supported applications in a virtualized environment, such that modifications required to the operating system are minimized (ideally none), and performance overhead is as low as possible. ii. It should be straightforward to move from one version of an operating system to another one; this is especially important to keep up with frequent Linux evolutions. iii. It should reuse native device drivers from their existing execution environments with no modification. iv. It should support existing legacy often real-time 1 Our virtualization layer can used for various embedded systems, but our current main focus is information appliances.operating systems and their applications while guaranteeing their deterministic real-time behavior.Our project is developing SPUMONE, which is a virtualization layer for multi-core processor-based embedded systems. SPUMONE assumes to use an SMP(Symmetric Multiprocessing)-based multi-core processor, and each core has a core-local memory. Thus, it is easy to share code and data from all cores, but each core can keep some code and data secretly in a core-local memory. SPUMONE uses the characteristics to implement the spatial isolation. SPUMONE satisfies the above requirements, and currently focuses on achieving the following four goals.i.Mapping of virtual cores on physical cores dynamically ...

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Section: Fig 4: Spumone Basic Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal and spatial isolation in a virtualization layer for multi-core processor based information appliances

Nakajima¹,

Kinebuchi²,

Shimada³

et al. 2011

16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)

Self Cite

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“…Therefore, in order to achieve better real-time responsiveness especially for some real-time tasks in a GPOS, we conduct a vCPU priority-boosting and migration mechanism in this paper, and discuss and compare it with other works. All the works are based on the previous developed virtualization work named SPUMONE [3] [4].…”

Section: Mixed Priority Scheduling In Virtualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving GPOS real-time responsiveness using vCPU migration in an embedded multicore virtualization platform

Lin

Mitake

Nakajima

2013

2013 IEEE 19th International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications

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In this paper, a vCPU (virtual CPU) migration mechanism in order to improve real-time responsiveness in a GPOS (General Purpose Operating System) is presented in the embedded multicore virtualization platform and can also be applied to CPS environment.In a GPOS/RTOS (Real Time Operating System) virtualization system nowadays, tasks in GPOS, however, also need some degree of real-time services from the system. Unfortunately, in a traditional virtualization platform, a virtualization layer always gives RTOS vCPU higher priority and preempts the execution of GPOS. Therefore, a kernel module in the GPOS is added in our virtualization system to export and boost a GPOS vCPU contexts which needs higher priority against RTOS vCPU. At the same time, in order not to sacrifice the performance of the victim RTOS vCPU, a vCPU migration mechanism is added to our virtualization system, and migrates the RTOS vCPU to a low-loading CPU when this vCPU is preempted.Performance improvement of GPOS's real-time responsiveness is also given while a detailed analysis of the overhead of the RTOS vCPU is performed as well. 978-1-4799-0850-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

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“…It can run on the multi-core platform; a singlecore version of SPUMONE is also provided. SPUMONE is a composition kernel that multiplexes a single physical CPU core into multiple virtual CPU instances [5]. It aims to provide a lightweight virtualization environment to its guest OSes where the impact of this virtualization layer on the guest OSes would be as small as possible.…”

Section: Base Virtualization Architecture: Spumonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…SPUMONE design properties are also examined to further analyze those issues and the distributed SPUMONE design is the most important feature. In this design, each available physical core contains exactly one copy of a virtualization instance, and a single virtualization instance crash will not affect the others [5]. It is also easily adapted into the multi-core SMP platform, thus increasing its scalability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust Lightweight Embedded Virtualization Layer Design with Simple Hardware Assistance

Lin

Kinebuchi

Nakajima

2012

IEICE Trans. Inf. & Syst.

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SUMMARYIn this paper, we propose a virtualization architecture for a multi-core embedded system to provide more system reliability and security while maintaining performance and without introducing additional special hardware supports or implementing a complex protection mechanism in the virtualization layer. Embedded systems, especially consumer electronics, have often used virtualization. Virtualization is not a new technique, as there are various uses for both GPOS (General Purpose Operating System) and RTOS (Real Time Operating System). The surge of the multicore platforms in embedded systems also helps consolidate the virtualization system for better performance and lower power consumption. Embedded virtualization design usually uses two approaches. The first is to use the traditional VMM, but it is too complicated for use in the embedded environment without additional special hardware support. The other approach uses the microkernel, which imposes a modular design. The guest systems, however, would suffer from considerable modifications in this approach, as the microkernel allows guest systems to run in the user space. For some RTOSes and their applications originally running in the kernel space, this second approach is more difficult to use because those codes use many privileged instructions. To achieve better reliability and keep the virtualization layer design lightweight, this work uses a common hardware component adopted in multi-core embedded processors. In most embedded platforms, vendors provide additional on-chip local memory for each physical core, and these local memory areas are only private to their cores. By taking advantage of this memory architecture, we can mitigate the above-mentioned problems at once. We choose to re-map the virtualization layer's program on the local memory, called SPUMONE, which runs all guest systems in the kernel space. Doing so, it can provide additional reliability and security for the entire system because the SPUMONE design in a multi-core platform has each instance installed on a separate processor core. This design differs from traditional virtualization layer design, and the content of each SPUMONE is inaccessible to the others. We also achieve this goal without adding overhead to the overall performance.

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Composition Kernel: A Multi-core Processor Virtualization Layer for Rich Functional Smart Products

Cited by 8 publications

References 12 publications

Temporal and spatial isolation in a virtualization layer for multi-core processor based information appliances

Temporal and spatial isolation in a virtualization layer for multi-core processor based information appliances

Improving GPOS real-time responsiveness using vCPU migration in an embedded multicore virtualization platform

Robust Lightweight Embedded Virtualization Layer Design with Simple Hardware Assistance

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