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Hi, We ran a few experiments to compare performance of VMware's paravirtualization technique (VMI) and hardware MMU technologies (HWMMU) on VMware's hypervisor. To give some background, VMI is VMware's paravirtualization specification which tries to optimize CPU and MMU operations of the guest operating system. For more information take a look at this

Hi, We ran a few experiments to compare performance of VMware's paravirtualization technique (VMI) and hardware MMU technologies (HWMMU) on VMware's hypervisor. To give some background, VMI is VMware's paravirtualization specification which tries to optimize CPU and MMU operations of the guest operating system. For more information take a look at this

I'm using VMWare Server 2 RC1 to on top of CentOS 5.2 x86_64 running a CentOS 5.2 i386 guest. I have enabled VMI in VMware, so I guess it won't let me install if VMI wasn't available in the kernel? How do I know whether VMI is supported/enabled and what performance benefits can I expect from it? I'm still not getting full hard drive speeds (only getting about 1/3 when using

Add a /proc node for the VMI sub-arch, which gives information on the VMI ROM detected using /proc/vmi/info and a list of kernel annotations in /proc/vmi/annotations. The timing information is VMware specific, and should probably be put into a separate /proc node (and a separate patch for our internal use). Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> Index:

Add a /proc node for the VMI sub-arch, which gives information on the VMI ROM detected using /proc/vmi/info and a list of kernel annotations in /proc/vmi/annotations. The timing information is VMware specific, and should probably be put into a separate /proc node (and a separate patch for our internal use). Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> Index:

Linker changes to add the VMI MACH_TEXT area into the kernel text section. This area layout is heavily influenced by magic to overlap exactly with the 32-byte VMI ROM entry points, allowing the kernel to copy the VMI ROM over the native section. As use of magic is on the decline, this approach is being phased out in favor of the more modern approach of the inline implementation. The translation

Linker changes to add the VMI MACH_TEXT area into the kernel text section. This area layout is heavily influenced by magic to overlap exactly with the 32-byte VMI ROM entry points, allowing the kernel to copy the VMI ROM over the native section. As use of magic is on the decline, this approach is being phased out in favor of the more modern approach of the inline implementation. The translation

The VMI ROM detection and code patching mechanism is illustrated in setup.c. There ROM is a binary block published by the hypervisor, and and there are certainly implications of this. ROMs certainly have a history of being proprietary, very differently licensed pieces of software, and mostly under non-free licenses. Before jumping to the conclusion that this is a bad thing, let us consider more

The VMI ROM detection and code patching mechanism is illustrated in setup.c. There ROM is a binary block published by the hypervisor, and and there are certainly implications of this. ROMs certainly have a history of being proprietary, very differently licensed pieces of software, and mostly under non-free licenses. Before jumping to the conclusion that this is a bad thing, let us consider more

Hi Peter, Removal of VMI(VMware's para-virtualization technique) is scheduled for 2.6.37, I was wondering what would be the right time frame for submitting a patch which does that. Does the x86-tip tree have any next branch where we can park this patch ? Below is the patch for your reference which just removes VMI specific bits, applies on top of x86-tip. There is also an opportunity to

Hi Peter, Removal of VMI(VMware's para-virtualization technique) is scheduled for 2.6.37, I was wondering what would be the right time frame for submitting a patch which does that. Does the x86-tip tree have any next branch where we can park this patch ? Below is the patch for your reference which just removes VMI specific bits, applies on top of x86-tip. There is also an opportunity to

Master definition of VMI interface, including calls, constants, and interface version. Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> Index: linux-2.6.16-rc5/include/asm-i386/mach-vmi/paravirtualInterface.h =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.16-rc5.orig/include/asm-i386/mach-vmi/paravirtualInterface.h 2006-03-08 10:08:45.000000000 -0800 +++

Master definition of VMI interface, including calls, constants, and interface version. Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> Index: linux-2.6.16-rc5/include/asm-i386/mach-vmi/paravirtualInterface.h =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.16-rc5.orig/include/asm-i386/mach-vmi/paravirtualInterface.h 2006-03-08 10:08:45.000000000 -0800 +++

In a virtualized environment, virtual machines will time share the system with each other and with other processes running on the host system. Therefore, a VM's virtual CPUs (VCPUs) will be executing on the host's physical CPUs (pcpus) for only some portion of time. The VMI exposes a paravirtual view of time to the guest operating systems so that they may operate more effectively in a

In a virtualized environment, virtual machines will time share the system with each other and with other processes running on the host system. Therefore, a VM's virtual CPUs (VCPUs) will be executing on the host's physical CPUs (pcpus) for only some portion of time. The VMI exposes a paravirtual view of time to the guest operating systems so that they may operate more effectively in a

Use para_fill instead of directly setting the APIC ops to the result of the vmi_get_function call - this allows one to implement a VMI ROM without implementing APIC functions, just using the native APIC functions. While doing this, I realized that there is a lot more cleanup that should have been done. Basically, we should never assume that the ROM implements a specific set of functions, and

Use para_fill instead of directly setting the APIC ops to the result of the vmi_get_function call - this allows one to implement a VMI ROM without implementing APIC functions, just using the native APIC functions. While doing this, I realized that there is a lot more cleanup that should have been done. Basically, we should never assume that the ROM implements a specific set of functions, and

So there is a logic error that would prevent us from ever using NOP = relocations, thus stopping any unnecessary callouts into a VMI ROM. It = doesn't affect us so much, but could conceivably affect open source = implementations of a VMI ROM in the future. It is not absolutely = critical, but it would be extremely nice to get it fixed in 2.6.21 so = there are no broken older kernels

So there is a logic error that would prevent us from ever using NOP = relocations, thus stopping any unnecessary callouts into a VMI ROM. It = doesn't affect us so much, but could conceivably affect open source = implementations of a VMI ROM in the future. It is not absolutely = critical, but it would be extremely nice to get it fixed in 2.6.21 so = there are no broken older kernels

Macros to use VMI calls from assembly and C languages are introduced. The macros are quite complex, but the end result is rather impressive. The result is that when compiling a VMI kernel, the native code is emitted inline, with no function call overhead, and some wiggle room for register allocation. The hypervisor compatibility code is emitted out of line into a separate section, and patched