Towards high-quality I/O virtualization

ABSTRACT

High-quality I/O virtualization (that is, complete device semantics, full-feature set, close-to-native performance and real-time response) is critical to both server and client virtualizations. Existing solutions for I/O virtualization (e.g., full device emulation, paravirtualization and direct I/O) cannot meet the requirements of high-quality I/O virtualization due to high overheads, lack of complete semantic or full-feature set support.

We have developed new techniques for high-quality I/O virtualization (including device semantic preservation, essential principles for avoiding device virtualization holes, and real-time VMM scheduler extensions), using direct I/O with hardware IOMMU. It not only meets the requirements of high quality I/O virtualization, but also is the basis for PCI-SIG I/O Virtualization (IOV). Experimental results show that our implementation can achieve up-to 98% of the native performance and up to 3.6X of the paravirtualization performance. In addition, it can improve the real-time-ness of the latency-sensitive application by up to 4.8X with the scheduler extensions.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.1 Process Management

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.4 Communications Management
      D.4.8 Performance

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Performance

Keywords:
I/O virtualization, direct I/O, virtualization