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2024-10-14 - 05:14

Dates and Events:

OSADL Articles:

2024-10-02 12:00

Linux is now an RTOS!

PREEMPT_RT is mainline - What's next?


2023-11-12 12:00

Open Source License Obligations Checklists even better now

Import the checklists to other tools, create context diffs and merged lists


2023-03-01 12:00

Embedded Linux distributions

Results of the online "wish list"


2022-01-13 12:00

Phase #3 of OSADL project on OPC UA PubSub over TSN successfully completed

Another important milestone on the way to interoperable Open Source real-time Ethernet has been reached


2021-02-09 12:00

Open Source OPC UA PubSub over TSN project phase #3 launched

Letter of Intent with call for participation is now available



Real Time Linux Workshops

1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015

14th Real Time Linux Workshop, October 18 to 20, 2012 at the Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Announcement - Call for papers (ASCII) - Hotels - Directions - Agenda - Paper Abstracts - Presentations - Registration - Abstract Submission - Sponsors - Gallery

Managing Low Latency in Paravirtualized Virtual Machines

Adam Lackorzynski, TU Dresden

Operating systems such as Linux are increasingly used for real-time work due to their combination of versatility and offering of low event latency. When virtualizing such a system, for example, to consolidate multiple different systems into a single host, the required latency constraints must still be fulfilled. Consequently the hypervisor as well as the virtual machine monitor must be designed in a way that the virtual machine does not block unduly long to violate latency constraints because of communication with the virtual machine monitor or other host system services.

Using embedded systems virtualization requires the paravirtualization approach as full system virtualization is not yet available. Typically paravirtualization approaches are coupled more tightly with the host system by using operating system interfaces. For example, the creation and destruction of address spaces must be done by the host kernel and thus the paravirtualized parts of the virtual machine must use hypervisor calls for handling address spaces. However, creating and especially destroying address spaces can be time costly and thus have a negative impact on the event latency of the virtual machine. The host adaption of a virtual machine must therefore never let the virtual machine block unduly long in such hypercalls. Nevertheless address spaces must be managed and the calls must be done. Putting those in a different host thread within the virtual machine turned out to have problems, for example, because the thread needs to have a  lower host priority which in turn leads to unbound resource usage.

The paper will detail on those observations and describe a possible solution that maintains a low event priority in the system.