Handling interrupts when virtual machines have direct access to a hardware device

In virtualized computer system in which a guest operating system runs on a virtual machine of a virtualized computer system and has direct access to a hardware device coupled to the virtualized computer system via a communication interface, a computer-implemented method of handling interrupts from t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Mahalingam, Mallik, Cremel, Olivier, Ramanan, Jyothir, Nelson, Michael
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 14.12.2010
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Summary:In virtualized computer system in which a guest operating system runs on a virtual machine of a virtualized computer system and has direct access to a hardware device coupled to the virtualized computer system via a communication interface, a computer-implemented method of handling interrupts from the hardware device to the guest operating system includes: (a) receiving a physical interrupt from the hardware device on a shared interrupt line of an interrupt controller; (b) masking the shared interrupt line of the interrupt controller; (c) generating a virtual interrupt corresponding to the physical interrupt to the guest operating system; and (d) the guest operating system executing an interrupt service routine.