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Impressive deep dive, this classic ASPLOS paper shows that early hardware virtualization support (like Intel VT-x) didn’t outperform VMware's binary-translated
by Jealous8 1y ago
Impressive deep dive, this classic ASPLOS paper shows that early hardware virtualization support (like Intel VT-x) didn’t outperform VMware's binary-translated software VMM due to high VM‑exit overheads and rigid models/
The obvious takeaway? Flexible software optimizations often beat hardware if exits are too heavy or inflexible. Makes me wonder: with modern nested virtualization and microarchitectural improvements, are we finally seeing hardware VMMs that consistently match or exceed software VMMs?
- justincormack 1y agoWe have also worked out how to vmexit less, eg more effective ways to do IO.
- throw7484485 1y agoHardware virtualization is cheating by using unsecure enhancements. Like 90% of existing CPUs have security vulnerabilities, that must be patched in OS. We can have this discussion when hardware gets a few years without major security flaw!