skip to main content
article

Virtualization for high-performance computing

Published: 01 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

The specific demands of high-performance computing (HPC) often mismatch the assumptions and algorithms provided by legacy operating systems (OS) for common workload mixes. While feature- and application-rich OSes allow for flexible and low-cost hardware configurations, rapid development, and flexible testing and debugging, the mismatch comes at the cost of --- oftentimes significant --- performance degradation for HPC applications.The ubiquitous availability of virtualization support in all relevant hardware architectures enables new programming and execution models for HPC applications without loosing the comfort and support of existing OS and application environments. In this paper we discuss the trends, motivations, and issues in hardware virtualization with emphasis on their value in HPC environments.

References

[1]
Advanced Micro Devices. AMD64 Virtualization Codenamed "Pacifica" Technology, Secure Virtual Machine Architecture Reference Manual, May 2005.
[2]
P. Barham, B. Dragovic, K. Fraser, S. Hand, T. Harris, A. Ho, et al. Xen and the art of virtualization. In Proc. of the 19th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles, Bolton Landing, NY, October 2003.
[3]
Edouard Bugnion, Scott Devine, and Mendel Rosenblum. DISCO: Running commodity operating systems on scalable multiprocessors. In Proc. of the 16th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles, pages 143--156, 1997.
[4]
Sung-Eun Choi, Erik A. Hendriks, Ronald Minnich, Matthew J. Sottile, and Aaron Marks. Life with ed: A case study of a linuxBIOS/BProc cluster. In HPCS, pages 35--41, 2002.
[5]
Robert P. Goldberg. Survey of virtual machine research. IEEE Computer Magazine, 7(6), 1974.
[6]
Eric Van Hensbergen. P. R. O. S. E. paritioned reliable operating system environment. Submitted to ACM Operating System Review, April 2006.
[7]
IBM. PowerPC Operating Environment Architecture, Book III, 2005.
[8]
IBM Research, http://www.research.ibm.com/hypervisor/. The Research Hypervisor.
[9]
Intel Corp. Intel Vanderpool Technology for IA-32 Processors (VT-x) Preliminary Specification, 2005.
[10]
Intel Corp. Intel Vanderpool Technology for Intel Itanium Architecture (VT-i) Preliminary Specification, 2005.
[11]
Samuel T. King, George W. Dunlap, and Peter M. Chen. Debugging operating systems with time-traveling virtual machines. In Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX'05), April 2005.
[12]
Joshua LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Matthew Chapman, Peter Chubb, Ben Leslie, and Gernot Heiser. Pre-virtualization: Slashing the cost of virtualization. Technical Report 2005-30, Fakultät für Informatik, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), November 2005.
[13]
Joshua LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Jan Stoess, and Stefan Götz. Unmodified device driver reuse and improved system dependability via virtual machines. In Proc. of the 6th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, San Francisco, CA, December 2004.
[14]
Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg. Formal requirements for virtualizable third generation architectures. In Proc. of the Fourth Symposium on Operating System Principles, Yorktown Heights, New York, October 1973.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review
ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review  Volume 40, Issue 2
April 2006
107 pages
ISSN:0163-5980
DOI:10.1145/1131322
Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 April 2006
Published in SIGOPS Volume 40, Issue 2

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)38
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4
Reflects downloads up to 06 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media