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The Experts below are selected from a list of 357 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform

Kenneth Van Surksum - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Massimo Ferrari - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Jeremy Sugerman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • bringing virtualization to the x86 architecture with the original Vmware Workstation
    ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 2012
    Co-Authors: Edouard Bugnion, Jeremy Sugerman, Scott W Devine, Mendel Rosenblum, Edward Y Wang
    Abstract:

    This article describes the historical context, technical challenges, and main implementation techniques used by Vmware Workstation to bring virtualization to the x86 architecture in 1999. Although virtual machine monitors (VMMs) had been around for decades, they were traditionally designed as part of monolithic, single-vendor architectures with explicit support for virtualization. In contrast, the x86 architecture lacked virtualization support, and the industry around it had disaggregated into an ecosystem, with different vendors controlling the computers, CPUs, peripherals, operating systems, and applications, none of them asking for virtualization. We chose to build our solution independently of these vendors. As a result, Vmware Workstation had to deal with new challenges associated with (i) the lack of virtualization support in the x86 architecture, (ii) the daunting complexity of the architecture itself, (iii) the need to support a broad combination of peripherals, and (iv) the need to offer a simple user experience within existing environments. These new challenges led us to a novel combination of well-known virtualization techniques, techniques from other domains, and new techniques. Vmware Workstation combined a hosted architecture with a VMM. The hosted architecture enabled a simple user experience and offered broad hardware compatibility. Rather than exposing I/O diversity to the virtual machines, Vmware Workstation also relied on software emulation of I/O devices. The VMM combined a trap-and-emulate direct execution engine with a system-level dynamic binary translator to efficiently virtualize the x86 architecture and support most commodity operating systems. By relying on x86 hardware segmentation as a protection mechanism, the binary translator could execute translated code at near hardware speeds. The binary translator also relied on partial evaluation and adaptive retranslation to reduce the overall overheads of virtualization. Written with the benefit of hindsight, this article shares the key lessons we learned from building the original system and from its later evolution.

  • gpu virtualization on Vmware s hosted i o architecture
    WIOV'08 Proceedings of the First conference on I O virtualization, 2008
    Co-Authors: Micah Dowty, Jeremy Sugerman
    Abstract:

    Modern graphics co-processors (GPUs) can produce high fidelity images several orders of magnitude faster than general purpose CPUs, and this performance expectation is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in personal computers. Despite this, GPU virtualization is a nascent field of research. This paper introduces a taxonomy of strategies for GPU virtualization and describes in detail the specific GPU virtualization architecture developed for Vmware's hosted products (Vmware Workstation and Vmware Fusion). We analyze the performance of our GPU virtualization with a combination of applications and micro bench-marks. We also compare against software rendering, the GPU virtualization in Parallels Desktop 3.0, and the native GPU. We find that taking advantage of hardware acceleration significantly closes the gap between pure emulation and native, but that different implementations and host graphics stacks show distinct variation. The micro bench-marks show that our architecture amplifies the overheads in the traditional graphics API bottlenecks: draw calls, downloading buffers, and batch sizes. Our virtual GPU architecture runs modern graphics-intensive games and applications at interactive frame rates while preserving virtual machine portability. The applications we tested achieve from 86% to 12% of native rates and 43 to 18 frames per second with Vmware Fusion 2.0.

  • Workshop on I/O Virtualization - GPU virtualization on Vmware's hosted I/O architecture
    2008
    Co-Authors: Micah Dowty, Jeremy Sugerman
    Abstract:

    Modern graphics co-processors (GPUs) can produce high fidelity images several orders of magnitude faster than general purpose CPUs, and this performance expectation is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in personal computers. Despite this, GPU virtualization is a nascent field of research. This paper introduces a taxonomy of strategies for GPU virtualization and describes in detail the specific GPU virtualization architecture developed for Vmware's hosted products (Vmware Workstation and Vmware Fusion). We analyze the performance of our GPU virtualization with a combination of applications and micro bench-marks. We also compare against software rendering, the GPU virtualization in Parallels Desktop 3.0, and the native GPU. We find that taking advantage of hardware acceleration significantly closes the gap between pure emulation and native, but that different implementations and host graphics stacks show distinct variation. The micro bench-marks show that our architecture amplifies the overheads in the traditional graphics API bottlenecks: draw calls, downloading buffers, and batch sizes. Our virtual GPU architecture runs modern graphics-intensive games and applications at interactive frame rates while preserving virtual machine portability. The applications we tested achieve from 86% to 12% of native rates and 43 to 18 frames per second with Vmware Fusion 2.0.

  • virtualizing i o devices on Vmware Workstation s hosted virtual machine monitor
    USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2001
    Co-Authors: Jeremy Sugerman, Ganesh Venkitachalam, Benghong Lim
    Abstract:

    Virtual machines were developed by IBM in the 1960’s to provide concurrent, interactive access to a mainframe computer. Each virtual machine is a replica of the underlying physical machine and users are given the illusion of running directly on the physical machine. Virtual machines also provide benefits like isolation and resource sharing, and the ability to run multiple flavors and configurations of operating systems. VmwareWorkstation brings such mainframe-class virtual machine technology to PC-based desktop and Workstation computers. This paper focuses on Vmware Workstation’s approach to virtualizing I/O devices. PCs have a staggering variety of hardware, and are usually pre-installed with an operating system. Instead of replacing the pre-installed OS, Vmware Workstation uses it to host a user-level application (VMApp) component, as well as to schedule a privileged virtual machine monitor (VMM) component. The VMM directly provides high-performance CPU virtualization while the VMApp uses the host OS to virtualize I/O devices and shield the VMM from the variety of devices. A crucial question is whether virtualizing devices via such a hosted architecture can meet the performance required of high throughput, low latency devices. To this end, this paper studies the virtualization and performance of an Ethernet adapter on Vmware Workstation. Results indicate that with optimizations, Vmware Workstation’s hosted virtualization architecture can match native I/O throughput on standard PCs. Although a straightforward hosted implementation is CPU-limited due to virtualization overhead on a 733 MHz Pentium R III system on a 100 Mb/s Ethernet, a series of optimizations targeted at reducing CPU utilization allows the system to match native network throughput. Further optimizations are discussed both within and outside a hosted architecture.

  • USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track - Virtualizing I/O Devices on Vmware Workstation's Hosted Virtual Machine Monitor
    2001
    Co-Authors: Jeremy Sugerman, Ganesh Venkitachalam
    Abstract:

    Virtual machines were developed by IBM in the 1960’s to provide concurrent, interactive access to a mainframe computer. Each virtual machine is a replica of the underlying physical machine and users are given the illusion of running directly on the physical machine. Virtual machines also provide benefits like isolation and resource sharing, and the ability to run multiple flavors and configurations of operating systems. VmwareWorkstation brings such mainframe-class virtual machine technology to PC-based desktop and Workstation computers. This paper focuses on Vmware Workstation’s approach to virtualizing I/O devices. PCs have a staggering variety of hardware, and are usually pre-installed with an operating system. Instead of replacing the pre-installed OS, Vmware Workstation uses it to host a user-level application (VMApp) component, as well as to schedule a privileged virtual machine monitor (VMM) component. The VMM directly provides high-performance CPU virtualization while the VMApp uses the host OS to virtualize I/O devices and shield the VMM from the variety of devices. A crucial question is whether virtualizing devices via such a hosted architecture can meet the performance required of high throughput, low latency devices. To this end, this paper studies the virtualization and performance of an Ethernet adapter on Vmware Workstation. Results indicate that with optimizations, Vmware Workstation’s hosted virtualization architecture can match native I/O throughput on standard PCs. Although a straightforward hosted implementation is CPU-limited due to virtualization overhead on a 733 MHz Pentium R III system on a 100 Mb/s Ethernet, a series of optimizations targeted at reducing CPU utilization allows the system to match native network throughput. Further optimizations are discussed both within and outside a hosted architecture.

Kenneth Van Surksum - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Tim Ebringer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • MALWARE - An automatic anti-anti-Vmware technique applicable for multi-stage packed malware
    2008 3rd International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE), 2008
    Co-Authors: Tim Ebringer, S. Boztag
    Abstract:

    The Vmware Workstation virtualisation software is widely used by antivirus researchers for malware analysis. However, a large amount of current generation malware employs various anti-Vmware techniques in order to resist analysis. To make things worse, these anti-Vmware techniques are applied not only in the payload itself, but also in the runtime packer that is used to disguise the malicious code. Fortunately, at the present time, there is not a wide variety of anti-Vmware methods in use, so the assembly code which describes the operation is quite characteristic. The issue therefore becomes exactly at what stage of the execution should one look for such code, since the actual anti-Vmware code is normally heavily obfuscated. Sometimes it may only be decrypted shortly before it is executed. This paper shows that judicious automated control of a debugger can successfully be used to slither around anti-Vmware detections even in sophisticated packers, such as Themida.

  • An automatic anti-anti-Vmware technique applicable for multi-stage packed malware
    2008 3rd International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE), 2008
    Co-Authors: Li Sun, Tim Ebringer, Serdar Boztas
    Abstract:

    The Vmware Workstation virtualisation software is widely used by antivirus researchers for malware analysis. However, a large amount of current generation malware employs various anti-Vmware techniques in order to resist analysis. To make things worse, these anti-Vmware techniques are applied not only in the payload itself, but also in the runtime packer that is used to disguise the malicious code. Fortunately, at the present time, there is not a wide variety of anti-Vmware methods in use, so the assembly code which describes the operation is quite characteristic. The issue therefore becomes exactly at what stage of the execution should one look for such code, since the actual anti-Vmware code is normally heavily obfuscated. Sometimes it may only be decrypted shortly before it is executed. This paper shows that judicious automated control of a debugger can successfully be used to slither around anti-Vmware detections even in sophisticated packers, such as Themida.

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