Description
Introduction
The goal of this project is to implement different communication mechanisms between two or more VMs and to
study their performance.
Three implementations are required form the student:
• a naive implementation that use IN/OUT port instructions;
• an implementation that use shared memory without interruptions;
• an implementation that use shared memory with interruptions;
Please note that the use of kvmtool/KVM is a must since such communication mechanism already exist in
Qemu (see section 2).
Related Work
Qemu has a support for such mechanism. It is called ivshmem. Students are free to inspire/reuse the code from
Qemu. An even better place to get inspiration can be found in the source of KVM, where an attempt to replicate
ivshmem has been attempted (see kvmtool/hw/pci-shmem.c).
However, this implementation is not functional. Of
course, it is not mandatory to replicate ivshmem as long as all the projects three requirements are met.
Project steps
The required steps have been described in section 1. Here we will give more details on them.
IO Ports Implementation
This step requires modifying the kvmtool and adding a program to the guest VM in userspace. Modifying the guest
kernel should not be necessary.
• Kvmtool need to be modifyed to catch IN/OUT instructions on some given ports;
• The same ports will be used by the userspace program to communicate with kvmtool. To access these ports
in userspace, one can use: ioperm(), iopl(), inb(), outb() and similar functions;
Shared Memory w/o Interrupt
This implementation requires setting a shared memory between “root mode” and “non-root mode”. It is probably
possible to implement it without modifying the guest kernel as long as one can find the physical address of a
memory region in userspace.
However it is recommended to use a kernel module as in the next step.
Shared Memory with Interrupt
For this step we need to implement a device driver in Linux. It may simpler to use the UIO device driver model for
this task. See Linux kernel documentation in: Documentation/driver-api/uio-howto.rst
Note: even when using shared memory, you may need to use the IO port implementation to do some initialization and so on.
Project Report
The report should be 10 pages and should at least contain:
• An introduction: describe the problem, a quick about the solutions, a description of the results, etc;
• A clear description of the software architecture of each implementation (figures can be used to facilitate the
understanding):
– What are the different layers involved in the communication;
– A detailed description of how the data traverse the different; memory layers, CPU modes, software layer
and so on;
– Also, if multiple solutions where available write them down and explain you choice;
• Implementation details;
• A performance analysis:
– comparison between the different implementations. For example, the time to transfer 4KB, 2MB, 1GB;
– a break down of the overhead of each software layer within the most performing implementation.
Remark: A concise report, even if it contains less pages than requested, is better than an empty 10 pages report.
Group work
This project can be accomplished in groups of maximum 2 students.
Results to be handed – Deadline: 2018-03-28 11:59PM
The following is expected to be handed by 2018-03-28, 11:59PM:
1. Sources and patches for each implementations.
Remark: avoid putting the code of kvmtool or Linux or other existing big project sources: put patches;
2. README files explaining:
• the content of each source and patch;
• how to compile and run the implementations;
3. Shell scripts to reproduce the experiments, if any;
4. The project report in PDF format.
All of this should be contained in a compressed archive. One archive per group should be submitted.
Grading
This project will be graded on 100 which are distributed as follow:
1. IO port implementation = 25 points
2. Shared memory w/o interrupts = 25 points
3. Shared memory with interrupts = 25 points
4. Report = 25 points
Don’t forget to earn extra points by doing the homework. Hopefully everybody will have 100 points at the end.
Remark: This grading maybe subject to change.
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