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Using the KVM API with ARM?

Using the KVM API with ARM?

Posted Oct 10, 2015 21:00 UTC (Sat) by alison (subscriber, #63752)
Parent article: Using the KVM API

> we'll set up an x86 virtual machine using Intel VT. For another platform, you'd need to handle
> different registers, different virtual hardware, and different expectations about memory layout
> and initial state.

Is anyone among the readers familiar enough with ARM to comment on how similar an implementation of a simple VM there would be? Obviously an ARM version would not employ Intel VT, and ARM ISA has its own notion of privilege levels, to begin with.

> Other than learning, debugging a virtual machine implementation, or as a party trick, why use
> /dev/kvm directly?

Please invite me to your parties.


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Using the KVM API with ARM?

Posted Oct 29, 2015 2:52 UTC (Thu) by yehuday (guest, #93707) [Link] (1 responses)

> Is anyone among the readers familiar enough with ARM to comment on how similar an implementation of a simple VM there would be? Obviously an ARM version would not employ Intel VT,
> and ARM ISA has its own notion of privilege levels, to begin with.
ARM added support for virtualization as an extension to ARMv7 architecture which later become part of ARMv8.
Hardware support for virtualization on ARM is a achieved by:
1. introducing a new CPU privellege level for hypervisors called Hyp or Excpetion Level 2 (EL2).
2. Adding 2nd stage translation to the CPUs MMU
3. Adding support for virtual interrupts to the generic interrupt controller (GIC)
4, Adding support for virtual timer in the ARM architected timer

there is a great article from Christopher Dall et all explaining how KVM was ported to ARM
http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/files/wpid-asplos2014-kvm.pdf

Using the KVM API with ARM?

Posted Nov 19, 2015 23:00 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/files/wpid-asplos2014-kvm.pdf

1972, 2005, 2014,...

In some respects computers can be quite depressing: mostly re-inventing the old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware-assisted_virtualiz...

Sure, they're now much faster... to crash.

(on a more positive note the article is really good)


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