August 08, 2008
Open-source virtualization — the right match for embedded Linux
This is the title of a talk I gave at LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week. I thought people might be interested in the slides for the talk and audio file(mp3). They list a number of use cases for embedded virtualization (although limited to what is relevant to the Linux community, there are more beyond that). I also summarise the different requirements for virtualization in the enterprise and embedded domains, check my recent paper for more details. And I explain why the security-performance tradeoff advocated by some of our competitors is not only contrary to the concept of virtualization (isolation is inherent in virtualization, not "optional"), but actually outright stupid, as isolation doesn't noticeably cost performance if you do it right. I may discuss this in more detail in a future blog.
Another point we haven't talked a lot about is that OKL4 makes inexpensive hardware go further: we can make an ARM9 perform similarly to an ARM11 (with comparable clock speed), while other systems (incl native Linux) suffer from hugh context-switching costs on ARM9 processors.
Posted by Gernot Heiser on August 08 at 12:16 PM
About Gernot Heiser:
Gernot Heiser, Chief Technology Officer, never thought he would be in the business world. Prior to NICTA's creation in 2003, Dr Heiser was a full-time faculty member at the University of New South Wales. However, this die-hard academic couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see the commercialization of this research. Gernot still loves teaching, almost as much as he loves good wine and good food. And anyone will tell you that Gernot knows his wine.