Visualization for embedded X86 multiprocessor applications

摘要

Virtualization of computer hardware has been used for many decades. The most widely noted early examples are those implemented by IBM on its mainframe hardware as a means to give its customers an easy upgrade from old "iron" to new "iron." In this case, one of the primary goals of virtualization was to allow legacy applications to run on newer machines, alongside applications designed for the new operating system and hardware. Software that manages the virtualization environment is often referred to as a virtual machine manager (VMM) or hypervisor. A VMM creates the illusion of a hardware platform, for the purpose of hosting an entire operating system (the guest operating system) and its applications. In most cases, the guest operating system and applications running inside a virtual machine are native to the underlying processor instruction set, so that only system-level operations and I/O devices need to be emulated, not an entire instruction set of a CPU.