Methods and systems to control virtual machines

• US 7,318,141 B2
• Filed: 12/17/2002
• Issued: 01/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Bennett, Steve M., Glew, Andrew, Smith, Larry, Neiger, Gilbert, Jeyasingh, Stalinselvaraj, Uhlig, Richard A., Cota-Robles, Erik C., Rodgers, Dion, Kagi, Alain, Kozuch, Michael A., Boleyn, Erich
• Primary Examiner(s): BATAILLE, PIERRE MICHE
• Application Number:
  US10/322,003
• Publication Number:
  US 20040117539A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,848 Days
• Field of Search: 711/6, 711/202, 711/203, 711/170, 718/1, 718/100
• US Class Current: 711/202
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided to control the execution of a virtual machine (VM). A VM Monitor (VMM) accesses VM Control Structures (VMCS) indirectly through access instructions passed to a processor. In one embodiment, the access instructions include VMCS component identifiers used by the processor to determine the appropriate storage location for the VMCS components. The processor identifies the appropriate storage location for the VMCS component within the processor storage or within memory.

Claims

1. A virtual machine (VM) control system, comprising:

a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that controls at least one virtual machine (VM) by accessing at least one Virtual Machine Control Structure (VMCS), where each of the at least one VMs is controlled by one of the at least one VMCSs;

a processor having access to a storage where the storage include storage locations associated with the VMCS; and

wherein the VMM uses VMCS access instructions to access each of the VMCSs.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the storage is comprised of at least one of a memory and a cache.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein each access instruction includes a VMCS component identifier used by the processor to determine a VMCS component within one of the VMCSs being accessed and to determine a storage location associated with said VMCS component.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein in conveying the required storage size for the VMCS, the required storage size is conveyed by performing at least one of a read instruction for a processor register containing the required storage size for the VMCS and executing an instruction which provides the required storage size for the VMCS.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein in providing the processor with the pointer, the pointer is provided by executing a VMCS pointer load instruction.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein in executing the VMCS pointer load instruction, the VMCS pointer load instruction includes, as an operand, a pointer address to the memory region at least as large as the required storage size for the VMCS, the operand being at least one of an explicit operand to the VMCS pointer load instruction and an implicit operand to the VMCS pointer load instruction.

12. The method of claim 1 further comprising, allocating the memory region prior to providing the processor with the pointer to the memory region.

4. An article comprising a machine-accessible medium having associated instructions. wherein the instructions, when accessed, result in a machine comprising at least one component performing:

identifying a storage location associated with an access instruction received from a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM);

determining a type of access instruction received from the VMM;

determining a data format associated with data that satisfies the access instruction; and

reformatting the data to an architecturally-defined data format, if the data is not in the architecturally-defined data format, before processing the access instruction.

5. The article of claim 4, wherein in identifying, the access instruction includes a component identifier.

6. The article of claim 4, wherein in identifying, the component identifier is used to map the VMM access instruction to the storage location that is at least one of located on a processor or in a memory.

7. The article of claim 4, wherein in determining the type of access instruction, the type is associated with at least one of a read instruction and a write instruction.

8. A method to activate a Virtual Machine Control Structure (VMCS):

conveying, from a processor to a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), a required storage size for a VMCS;

providing the processor with a pointer to a memory region that is at least as large as the required storage size for the VMCS; and

storing, by the processor, a portion of the VMCS in the memory region.

13. A method to access a Virtual Machine Control Structure (VMCS), comprising:

executing, by a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), a VMCS access instruction; and

storing, by a processor, a VMCS component by using a VMCS component identifier associated with the VMCS access instruction.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein in storing the VMCS component, the VMCS component identifier is at least one of an explicit operand to the VMCS access instruction and an implicit operand to the VMCS access instruction.

15. The method of claim 13 wherein in executing the VMCS access instruction, the VMCS access instruction is at least one of a read instruction from the VMCS component and a write instruction to the VMCS component.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein executing the VMCS access instruction, the VMCS access instruction is a write instruction to the VMCS component and the VMCS access instruction includes a write data value as an operand.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein in executing the VMCS access instruction, the write data value is in an architecturally-defined data format.

18. The method of claim 16 further comprising writing the write data value to the VMCS component.

19. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

determining that the VMCS component identifier is associated with the VMCS component which resides in memory;

calculating a memory location for the VMCS component which resides in memory; and

accessing the VMCS component which resides in memory.

20. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

determining that the VMCS component identifier is associated with the VMCS component which resides in on-processor storage; and

accessing the VMCS component which resides in on-processor storage.

21. The method of claim 13, wherein in executing the VMCS access instruction, the VMCS access instruction is a read instruction from the VMCS component and wherein in accessing the VMCS component further comprises reading data associated with the VMCS component and returning the data associated with the VMCS component to the VMM.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein in returning the data associated with the VMCS component to the VMM, returning the data includes reformatting the data associated with the VMCS component to match an architecturally-defined data format for the VMCS component, producing a return data value and returning the return data value to the VMM.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein in returning the data associated with the VMCS component to the VMM, the data is in a format that is at least one of a same format as an architecturally-defined data format for the VMCS component and different format than the architecturally-defined data format for the VMCS component.

24. The method of claim 23, further comprising:

reformatting the write data to match an implementation-specific data format for the VMCS component resulting in a reformatted write data value; and

writing the reformatted write data value to the VMCS component.

25. The method of claim 24 wherein in reformatting the write data, the implementation-specific data format for the VMCS component is at least one of the same format as the architecturally-defined format for the VMCS component and a different format than the architecturally-defined format for the VMCS component.