System and method for real time virtualization

• US 9,740,513 B2
• Filed: 06/04/2015
• Issued: 08/22/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/05/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Gatherer, Alan, Bhattacharya, Debashis, Soong, Anthony C. K.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Phillip H
• Application Number:
  US14/730,929
• Publication Number:
  US 20150355919A1
• Time in Patent Office: 810 Days
• Field of Search: 718 1, 718102, 718103, 718107
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4881 Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5005 to service a request
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/52 Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/545 where tasks reside in different layers, e.g. user- and kernel-space

Abstract

A system includes a plurality of compute modules and a first processor configured to implement a virtualization layer, where the virtualization layer is configured to support real time jobs. The system also includes a hardware support layer coupled between the plurality of compute modules and the virtualization layer, where the hardware support layer is configured to provide an interface between the virtualization layer and the plurality of compute modules.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a first processor configured to implement a virtualization layer, wherein the virtualization layer is configured to support real time jobs and to convert resource requests from non-real time jobs into real time resource requests;

a hardware support layer coupled between a plurality of modules and the virtualization layer, wherein the hardware support layer is configured to provide an interface between the virtualization layer and the plurality of modules,

a second processor configured to implement a memory based function; and

a third processor configured to implement a virtual memory abstraction that provides interfaces to non-real time jobs and is coupled between the memory based function and the virtualization layer.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the hardware support layer comprises buffer management hardware.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the hardware support layer comprises message passing hardware.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the hardware support layer comprises service level agreement (SLA) support.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of modules comprises:

a system on a chip (SoC) level interconnect; and

SoC level memory.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of modules comprises hardware accelerators.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtualization layer is configured to perform dataflow abstraction and isolation.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a fourth processor configured to implement a dataflow based function, wherein the fourth processor is directly coupled to the virtualization layer.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtualization layer is a foundation virtualization layer.

10. A method comprising:

receiving, from an application, a real time resource request for hardware resources to perform a job, wherein the real time resource request comprises a real time requirement for the job, wherein the job is a hybrid real time and non-real time job, and wherein the job is configured to perform real time accesses directly through a foundation virtualization layer and to perform non-real time accesses through a virtual memory abstraction layer;

requesting, to a first chip level logical resource manager, a first subset of a plurality of hardware resources to perform the job; and

receiving, from the first chip level logical resource manager, a first hardware resource corresponding to the first subset of the plurality of hardware resources.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

requesting, to a plurality of chip level logical resource managers, the plurality of hardware resources, wherein the plurality of chip level logical resource managers comprises the first chip level logical resource manager; and

receiving, from the plurality of chip level logical resource managers, a plurality of allocated hardware resources to perform the job, wherein the plurality of allocated hardware resources comprises the first hardware resource.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

determining whether the plurality of allocated hardware resources is sufficient to perform the job in accordance with the real time requirement for the job; and

transmitting, to the application, a message indicating whether the plurality of allocated hardware resources is sufficient to perform the job in accordance with the real time requirement for the job.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the application is a wireless application.

14. A method comprising:

using a hardware resource by a first job;

transferring ownership of the hardware resource from the first job to an operating system, wherein the first job cannot access the hardware resource after transferring ownership of the hardware resource from the first job to the operating system, and wherein the first job is a non-real time job within a real time job;

transferring ownership of the hardware resource from the operating system to a second job; and

using the hardware resource by the second job after transferring ownership of the hardware resource from the operating system to the second job.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

receiving a resource request for the first job;

allocating the hardware resource to the first job; and

transmitting the hardware resource before using the hardware resource by the first job.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising enforcing service level agreements (SLAs).

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the second job is a non-real time job.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein the second job is a real time job.