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Unmodified Device Driver Reuse and Improved System
Dependability via Virtual Machines
Joshua LeVasseur
Universität Karlsruhe
this years OSDI paper of Joshua LeVasseur, Volkmar Uhlig, Jan
Stoess, Stefan Götz
We propose a method to reuse unmodified device drivers and to
improve system dependability using virtual machines. We run the
unmodified device driver, with its original operating system, in a
virtual machine. This approach enables extensive reuse of existing
and unmodified drivers, independent of the OS or device vendor,
significantly reducing the barrier to building new OS endeavors. By
allowing distinct device drivers to reside in separate virtual
machines, this technique isolates faults caused by defective or
malicious drivers, thus improving a system s dependability. We show
that our technique requires minimal support infrastructure and
provides strong fault isolation. Our prototype s network
performance is within 3--8% of a native Linux system. Each
additional virtual machine increases the CPU utilization by about
0.12%. We have successfully reused a wide variety of unmodified
Linux network, disk, and PCI device drivers.
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