Porting Xen Paravirtualization to MIPS Architecture
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The document discusses the porting of Xen paravirtualization to the MIPS architecture, specifically focusing on Broadcom's XLP architecture. It details the implementation of CPU and memory virtualization, instruction emulation, and various performance results of the system compared to bare metal Linux. Future work includes updating software versions and enhancing I/O paravirtualization while collaborating with MIPS Technologies.
Porting Xen Paravirtualization to MIPS Architecture
- 1. Porting Xen Paravirtualization to MIPS Architecture Yonghong Song Broadcom 1
- 2. Motivation • Broadcom XLP – 8 cores, 4 threads each core – Out-Of- Out-Of-Order – L1D, L1I, L2 each core, shared L3 – Accelerators: NET, SEC, RAID, DMA, COMP, etc. – SOCs: USB, PCIE, FLASH, I2C, etc. • Need for a software enabled virtualization solution • Xen ported and provided as a solution 2
- 3. General Xen Usage Model Xen dom0 Xen domU Xen domU (Mgmt App) (Guest OS) (Guest OS) launch Create, monitor, destroy Xen Hypervisor Hardware (CPU, Memory, Disk, Net/PCI, etc) 3
- 4. Hybrid Control/Data Plane Model Shared Memory Control Plane Data Plane Data Plane Bare Metal Linux NET 4
- 5. Proposed Model in Xen Shared Memory Dom0 DomU DomU Control Plane Data Plane Data Plane Xen NET 5
- 6. Outline • CPU Virtualization (mips64r2 only) • Memory virtualization • Instruction emulation • Exception handling • Event Channel and Timer Interrupt • Preliminary Benchmarking Results • Summary and Future Work 6
- 7. Change of Privilege Levels Bare Metal Mode Virtualization Mode User apps User apps Linux Linux L Xen L : user ring : supervisor ring : kernel ring 7
- 8. Address Spaces user space guest kernel virtual space GVA (0 – 2^40) (0x4000 0000 0000 0000 -) GPA guest 0 phys addr guest N phys addr MA machine memory Kernel code + data | shared pages with xen | … | kernel page table | free pages 0x0 Size allocated to each guest Xen in unmapped space 8
- 9. Page Table Management guest page table P2M table GPA MA GVA new guest page table GVA MA 9
- 10. Page Table Layout Bare Metel Linux pgd pmd pte VA pf PMD page VA pf PTE page PA pgd: page global directory pmd: page middle directory pte: page table entry 10
- 11. Page Table Layout PV Linux pgd pmd xkphys (MA of PMD page) pte xkphys(MA of PTE page) MA address xkphys: 64-bit kernel physical space (unmapped) xkphys: avoid TLB refill during page table walk Hardware page walker is used 11
- 12. Instruction Emulation • Privileged instructions in guests get trapped and emulated • XEN trap handlers decipher the instruction and emulate appropriately • A few instructions cause hardware state to change, while others change the shadow state • Shadow state is maintained per virtual cpu of domains Privileged Insns Guest Xen Shadow states cop0 regs mfc0 tlbp mtc0 tlbs tlbr Bookkeeping for ei/di Exception prop eret caches … 12
- 13. Hypercalls • The service API between guests and xen • Analogous to system calls between userspace and linux • Used when a particular service is requested or the overhead of trap and emulate is high • Implemented using the “syscall” instruction • Sample uses: vcpu creation, request cache flush, etc userspace syscall linux hypercall xen 13
- 14. Exception Handling • Exceptions triggered by guests handled by xen – Hypercalls – Address error exception – Privileged instruction traps • Exceptions triggered by userspace bounced into guests – Guests register callbacks for exception entry points such as general exception vector etc – Xen maintains shadow state to return to userspace after the propagated exception is handled – Interrupts injected into guests while the bounced exception is handled, retaining regular linux semantics 14
- 15. A syscall example Applications 1. syscall insn 8. app resumes after syscall 4. xen bounces 5. guest syscall syscall to guest handling Guest Kernel priv insn eret trap 2. control e 7. xen restores transfers r Original state, xen e Does final eret t Shadow 6. xen executes 3. xen syscall architecture Eret handler Xen handler state 15
- 16. Event Channels • Events: asynchronous notifications to domains (akin to signals in Unix) • Event channels: abstract duplex communication channels (akin to sockets): <dom1, port1; dom2, port2> • Interrupts are mapped to events – Intradomain & interdomain events (e.g., domU console) – Virtual IRQ (e.g., timer interrupts) – Physical IRQ (e.g., passthrough device interrupts) • Delivered through a callback function 16
- 17. Time Management • Time keeping in xen – Maintaining system time – Using XLP-specific internal global 64bit free running counter – Requesting timer interrupts: done by maintaining per-cpu timer list and programming the count/compare registers • Guest OS – Xen clocksource: a hardware abstraction for a free running counter to maintain system time – Maintained through timestamps written by xen on a shared page – Xen clockevent: an interface to request timer interrupts – Done using the hypercall to program a single shot timer in xen 17
- 18. Timer Interrupt Illustration Applications 1. timer interrupt 6. guest executes occurs event handler Guest Kernel 5. xen injects 7. guest event into does eret 2. control guest 9. xen restores transfers original state, to xen does final eret 3. xen interrupt 4. xen sets 8. xen exectues handler event pending eret handler Xen executes for the guest 18
- 19. Performance Optimization • Expose certain shadow states for guest OS to avoid excessive exception start/end cost • When guest executes “wait” insn, xen tries to “wait” also to avoid burning cpu resources 19
- 20. Preliminary Benchmarking Result • XLP832: 8 cores, 4 threads each core, 1.0GHZ – Only 1 core, 4 threads used for measuring time • Intel Core 2: 2 cores, 1 thread per core, 2.4GHZ – Not using hardware virtualization extensions • CPU/Memory intensive benchmarks like dhrystone, eembc, coremark, etc. – 0 – 5% slowdown for dom0 compared to bare metal linux, for both x86 and XLP • Hackbench (a lot of system calls) – 2X slowdown for dom0 compared to bare metal linux, for both x86 and XLP • No noticeable performance difference between dom0 and domU on XLP 20
- 21. Summary and Future Work • A MIPS port of xen paravirtualization has implemented – MMU, exception/interrupt handling, etc. – Comparable performance to x86 for bare metal vs. xen • Currently, our implementation uses xen 3.4.0 for xen hypervisor, 4.0.0 for xen tools, linux 2.6.32 for PV linux, so we need to – Update to latest versions of Xen – Submit patches upstream • More work on I/O paravirtualization • Ongoing collaboration with MIPS Technologies 21
- 22. Thank You