Misters, Happy New Year to you. Let me introduce myself : Guillaume FORTAINE, Engineer in Computer Science. I am currently working on a Cloud Computing Firmware in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service context. The product is an UEFI Hypervisor. It puts virtualization exactly where it belongs: Into the firmware [0] Customers will be able to deploy their appliances and products directly to new hardware - without headaches due to the underlying technology. It will enable scalability through high-end technology on their x86 bases server systems. My Business Model comes from this fairly simple question : What is the value-added from an OEM point of view to need 3rd parties to provide an Hypervisor Layer knowing that Virtualization is a feature from the Hardware (so it belongs to the CPU / Chipset / OEM World) and they are not necessary to enable it (coreboot AVATT prototype is the most successful example [1]), however they are making the greatest benefits from it ? To quote [2] : "There's actually a lot to be said for the embedded hypervisor. Lots of IT environments--especially enterprise ones--do indeed have a mix of operating systems and operating system versions. Given that, there is indeed a lot to be said for the idea that hypervisors just come with the server as a sort of superset to the firmware, like BIOS, already loaded on every system. Then IT administrators could just configure any guest OSs they want on top." That's why I am currently going further since the first successful prototype of the coreboot GSOC project AVATT (All Virtual All The Time) [1]. Coreboot is an open source hardware initialization firmware. It does some basic hardware init, then hands over control to one of many possible payloads. This Google Summer of Code sponsored project suggested the idea of implementing a Linux kernel with KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine to provide Type I Hypervisor abilities to Linux) as a coreboot payload (=Virtualization inside the BIOS). However, after several discussions with leading OEMs inside the UEFI Forum, I realized that coreboot was not a convenient choice as a Platform Initialization code : With the processors and chipsets being mostly commodity (at least identical between IHVs), there is little room in the platform for vendors such as Dell, IBM, and HP to differentiate between each other on features, so all have chosen to implement features in BIOS as one differentiation location. CoreBoot is interesting, in that it could remove even that level of differentiation capability between the vendors; or it could provide the ultimate in end user customization (hardware/firmware-as-a-service models, or eliminate-the-IHV models). They are exploring if/how they can utilize CoreBoot, for specific customers, but simply do not see the broad market demand for CoreBoot to displace their entrenched development projects (legacy BIOS and UEFI), again, they simply don't have the resources needed to keep many separate streams of BIOS-level development going at once, when it's not clear there could be any ROI for adding CoreBoot in a general product offering. Moreover, there are many liability and ownership issues due to its GPL-Licence. So, that's why after a thorough research work, I definitely believe that the Intel Rapid Boot Toolkit [3] could be the perfect BIOS Framework knowing that it is UEFI-Based and that it provides a Linux payload, like coreboot, enabling a Firmware-as-a-Service Model. To quote [4]: "Intel, Dell, and servers that change with the phases of the moon As we reported a while back, Dell is looking to bundle a hypervisor on the motherboard using flash, so that the hypervisor loads first and then loads the OS. Even more importantly, Intel itself headed in this direction with their line of server boards that use the company's Rapid Boot Toolkit. Both of these are efforts that bring lightweight, task-specific, widget-like personalities to high-powered server hardware. Intel's Rapid Boot Toolkit is basically the same as what Dell is planning (i.e., a pool of embedded flash boots a hypervisor, which then loads the OS), but Intel is already there with a line of server motherboards. Furthermore, the beauty of Intel's scheme is that the hypervisor can pull an OS image from over the network and load the image on the system without ever spinning up the hard drive. This functionality replaces the standard Linux PXE boot, and it can be done with Windows, as well." The value-added move to the payload ( Firmware-as-a-Service ) and it will be portable across all OEMs products (ensuring Linux Device Drivers compatibility for IOMMU to provide High-Performance Hardware Virtualization : Infrastructure-as-a-Service). The Platform Initialization becomes secondary and Hardware Vendors can provide a closed UEFI Platform Initialization code to protect their value-add features. I have currently a team of Linux-From-Scratch / Embedded experts who will provide engineering support for a custom Rapid Boot Toolkit. Thanks to this one, we will be able to create a Cloud Computing Firmware. The functional specifications of this one are : a) Smart (WBEM : SLP + CIM + SSL/TLS) [5] b) Virtual Hypervisor (Linux + KVM + IOMMU) This is Firmware Engineering at the highest-level, not 'marketing fluff' like Citrix Xen for OEMs or VMWare ESXi, because it will be the first true Bare-Metal Hypervisor in the World and I definitely believe that it could revolutionize the industry. I would greatly appreciate to know if I would be able to make a partnership with the Linux Foundation to sponsor this project, if possible, please. To realize this project, I am currently asking two things, if possible, please : 1) Intel Rapid Boot Toolkit [3] 2) Server Board with : a) IOMMU : Intel VT-d2/AMD IOMMU b) ROM chip socketed c) UEFI Firmware c) Numonyx Forte M25P128 [6] I look forward to your answer, Best Regards, Guillaume FORTAINE [0] http://x86asm.net/articles/uefi-hypervisors-winning-the-race-to-bare-metal/ [1] http://www.coreboot.org/AVATT [2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13556_3-10170884-61.html [3] http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ism/rbt/index.htm [4] http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2007/11/split-personalties-new-hypervisorflash-combos-mean-an-os-is-just-one-way-to-boot.ars [5] http://icac2009.acis.ufl.edu/files/presentations/Kinzhalin.pdf [6] http://www.numonyx.com/en-US/MemoryProducts/NORserial/Pages/M25P.aspx _______________________________________________ Virtualization mailing list Virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/virtualization
