How the Xen Hypervisor Supports CPU Virtualization on ARM

Early computer architectures, like the first Acorn RISC Machine pictured in Figure 0, had no support for CPU virtualization. In the 30 years since, processor designers have added new hardware components to fully enable virtualization.

This article explores how the Xen hypervisor supports CPU virtualization on modern ARM processors. We will start with a short background on virtualization and Xen, followed by a discussion of how ARM supports CPU virtualization with the virtualization extensions and finishing with a discussion of how Xen utilizes these features.

We are focused specifically on the ARMv8 architecture, commonly referred to as AArch64, and systems that support the ARM virtualization extensions. We will be assuming that a device tree is used for hardware discovery as is the case for nearly all embedded ARM devices.

VirtualizationMatthew FahrenkrugMarch 3, 2020Xen, Virtualization, Arm

Deep Dive: MMU Virtualization with Xen on ARM

This article will explore how the Xen hypervisor uses the Memory Management Unit (MMU) on ARM architecture to support virtualization. We’ll take a brief look at the history and purpose of the MMU then dive into Xen specifics, focusing on the ARMv8 implementation.

VirtualizationGreg PearsonFebruary 18, 2020Xen, Arm, Virtualization

Benchmarking Xen Virtualization

Xen is an open-source baremetal hypervisor that is widely used by commercial and non-commercial platforms to provide virtualization support. However, unlike most other hypervisors, Xen supports multiple ways of virtualizing guests. Below is a brief history of the development of these modes and their relationships with one another:

VirtualizationAdam SchwalmOctober 8, 2019Virtualization, Xen

Nesting XenBlanket on AWS

As a security company with a focus on utilizing hypervisor technology, the team at Star Lab wanted to research potential hypervisor-based solutions for cloud security. The demand for cloud services has skyrocketed worldwide, with an increasing amount of critical services being migrated to the cloud. Sophisticated adversaries will seek to exploit cloud platforms to access critical / sensitive information, and these new threats demand novel virtualization-based cyber security tools and techniques to keep pace and blunt the adversaries attacks.

VirtualizationMark SenofskyJuly 22, 2019Cyber Security, Virtualization, Xen, Linux, Cloud