Very cool! Who is behind this project? Intel? I will give it a try! Thanks, Jun On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Xiaodong Yi <xdong.yi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Luvalley is a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) spawned from the KVM > project. Its part of source codes are derived from KVM to virtualize > CPU instructions and memory management unit (MMU). However, its > overall architecture is completely different from KVM, but somewhat > like Xen. Luvalley runs outside of Linux, just like Xen's > architecture, but it still uses Linux as its scheduler, memory > manager, physical device driver provider and virtual IO device > emulator. Moreover, Luvalley may run WITHOUT Linux. In theory, any > operating system could take the place of Linux to provide the above > services. Currently, Luvalley supports Linux and Windows. That is to > say, one may run Luvalley to boot a Linux or Windows, and then run > multiple virtualized operating systems on such Linux or Windows. > > If you are interested in Luvalley project, you may download the source > codes from > http://sourceforge.net/projects/luvalley/ > > The following is more details about Luvalley. > > Luvalley is an external hypervisor, just like Xen > (http://www.xen.org). It boots and controls the X86 machine before > starting up any operating system. However, Luvalley is much smaller > and simpler than Xen. Most jobs of Xen, such as scheduling, memory > management, interrupt management, etc, are shifted to Linux (or any > other OS), which is running on top of Luvalley. > > Luvalley gets booted first when the X86 machine is power on. It boots > up all CPUs in SMP system and enables their virtualization extensions. > Then the MBR (Master Boot Record) is read out and executed in CPU's > virtualization mode. Following this way, a Linux (or any other OS) > will be booted up at last. Luvalley assigns all physical memory, > programmable interrupt controller (PIC) and IO devices to this > priviledged OS. Following Xen, we call this OS as "domain 0" (dom0) > OS. > > Like KVM, a modified Qemu is running on dom0 Linux to provide virtual > IO devices for other operating systems running on top of Luvalley. We > also follow Xen to call these operating systems "domain user" (domU). > That is to say, there must be exact one dom0 OS and may be several > domU OSs running on top of Luvalley. Each domU OS corresponds to a > Qemu process in dom0 OS. The memory of domU is allocated from dom0 by > Qemu. And when Qemu is scheduled to run by dom0 Scheduler, it will > call Luvalley to run the corresponding domU. > > Moreover, as Luvalley requires nothing from the dom0 Linux kernel, > other operating systems such as Windows, FreeBSD, etc can also serve > as dom0 OS, provided that Qemu can be ported to these operating > systems. Since Qemu is an userland application and is able to cross > platform, such porting is feasible. Currently, we have added the > Luvalley support into Qemu-0.10.0, which can be compiled and run in > Windows. With the help of Luvalley, Qemu-0.10.0 runs much faster > becuase it could utilize the VT support provided by Intel CPU. > > In summary, Luvalley inherited all merits from KVM. Especially, > Luvalley is very small and simple. It is even more easy-to-use than > KVM because it does not depend on specific Linux kernel version. Every > version of Linux can serve as Luvalley's dom0 OS, except that Qemu > cannot run on it. > > In addition, we think Luvalley's architecture meets the demand on both > desktop and server operating system area: > > 1. In the desktop area, there are many kinds of operating systems > runing on various hardwares and devices. In theory, it is rather easy > to add virtualization ability for all kinds of operating systems, > without sacrificing the hardware compatibility and the user > experience. Moreover, Luvalley is very easy to install. It requires > only a boot loader which supports Multiboot Specification, e.g., Grub, > WinGrub (http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos), etc. > > 2. In the server area, especially for large-scale server systems (for > example, throusands of CPUs), a single Linux is not suitable to manage > the whole system. Therefore, KVM cannot be used properly. Luvalley's > architecture is more suitable for servers. For example, it can be used > to divide physical resources to partitions, and run a Linux for each > partition. In addition, Luvalley is very small and may be put into > BIOS to serve as a virtulization firmware. > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
