HYPERVISOR CONTEXT SWITCHING USING TLB TAGS IN PROCESSORS HAVING MORE THAN TWO HIERARCHICAL PRIVILEGE LEVELS

In a virtualized computer system operable in more than two hierarchical privilege levels, components of a hypervisor, which include a virtual machine kernel and virtual machine monitors (VMMs), are assigned to different privilege levels. The virtual machine kernel operates at a low privilege level t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors WARKENTIN ANDREI, TUCH HARVEY
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 24.12.2015
Subjects
CALCULATING
COMPUTING
COUNTING
ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
PHYSICS
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Summary:In a virtualized computer system operable in more than two hierarchical privilege levels, components of a hypervisor, which include a virtual machine kernel and virtual machine monitors (VMMs), are assigned to different privilege levels. The virtual machine kernel operates at a low privilege level to be able to exploit certain features provided by the low privilege level, and the VMMs operate at a high privilege level to support execution of virtual machines. Upon determining that a context switch from the virtual machine kernel to a VMM is to be performed, the computer system exits the low privilege level, and enters the high privilege level to execute a trampoline that supports context switches to VMMs, such as state changes, and then the VMM. The trampoline is deactivated after execution control is switched to the VMM.
Bibliography:Application Number: US201414312225