A fully virtualizable ISA

Muhammad Akhtar

unread,

Sep 15, 2019, 7:22:04 AM9/15/19

to RISC-V Teach

AoA All,

Speaking from a beginners perspective I have to explain the following term to an undergraduate student in First course on Architecture.

RISCV is a fully virtualizable ISA to ease hypervisor developement

Is the term "virtualizable isa" too advanced for an introductory course on architecture?

If no, can any one point me to some article / literature / book that can explain what is meant by "virtualizable isa"?. Are other ISAs (arm, x86) not easily virtualizable?

Bruce Hoult

unread,

Sep 26, 2019, 1:25:57 AM9/26/19

to Muhammad Akhtar, RISC-V Teach

Until quite recently in its history x86 was not virtualizable. People were astounded when VMWare managed to do it by analyzing every basic block in the program being run before the first time it was run, and recompiling instructions that are virtualization holes.

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/VMware_VMI_performance.pdf

Other programs using similar techniques include valgrind and qemu though I think VMWare was the first to show it was practical, around 1999.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RISC-V Teach" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to riscv-teach...@groups.riscv.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/groups.riscv.org/d/msgid/riscv-teach/0744e70a-e4ab-4040-84be-4fafb2a6d07c%40groups.riscv.org.

kr...@berkeley.edu

unread,

Sep 26, 2019, 6:56:59 AM9/26/19

to Bruce Hoult, Muhammad Akhtar, RISC-V Teach

Can start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popek_and_Goldberg_virtualization_requirements

Krste

| https://groups.google.com/a/groups.riscv.org/d/msgid/riscv-teach/CAMU%2BEkzsfx1CkTp5PhQmQozwj%3DRHMBKiJVFMUTyMGZBQqcKefQ%40mail.gmail.com
| .

Reply all

Reply to author

Forward