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Real-Time Unikernels: A First Look

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High Performance Computing (ISC High Performance 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13999))

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Abstract

Real-time virtualization is currently a hot topic, and there is much ongoing research on real-time Virtual Machines and hypervisors. However, most of the previous research focused on the virtualization stack (hypervisor, host Operating System, Virtual Machine scheduling, etc.) and did not investigate the impact of the guest Operating System architecture on real-time performance. This paper is a first step in filling this gap and investigates the suitability of unikernels for serving real-time applications. The most important existing unikernels are investigated, evaluating their usability in the context of real-time virtualization. Finally, the real-time performance of OSv is compared with the ones of the Linux kernel.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://cloudius-systems.com.

  2. 2.

    It seems that musl developers implemented the function in this way because they think the Linux sched_setscheduler() system call is not POSIX compliant.

  3. 3.

    For example, using PVH https://stefano-garzarella.github.io/posts/2019-08-23-qemu-linux-kernel-pvh.

  4. 4.

    https://qemu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/system/i386/microvm.html.

  5. 5.

    https://www.cloudhypervisor.org.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

    Luca Abeni

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  1. Luca Abeni
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Correspondence to Luca Abeni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Amanda Bienz

  2. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Michèle Weiland

  3. Université Paris-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette, France

    Marc Baboulin

  4. CERFACS, Toulouse, France

    Carola Kruse

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Abeni, L. (2023). Real-Time Unikernels: A First Look. In: Bienz, A., Weiland, M., Baboulin, M., Kruse, C. (eds) High Performance Computing. ISC High Performance 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13999. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40843-4_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40843-4_10

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-40843-4

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