A Split Driver Approach to Soc Virtualization - Challenges and Opportunities

Embedded platforms are becoming increasingly more resource-rich (e.g. processing speeds, number of cores, memory, and communication rates). As a result, they are being transformed from `closed', fixed-function devices to programmable and flexible platforms capable of supporting diverse types of services. One approach to enabling service diversity jointly with proper isolation of key critical functionality is to leverage platform virtualization technology. Toward this end, this paper first describes an approach to virtualizing System-on-a-Chip (SoC) platforms, and next explores the opportunities for shared use of such virtualized SoC devices by multiple concurrently executing services. The research is conducted on the Intel Tolapai SoC which integrates an x86 core with a crypto accelerator, and using the Xen hypervisor.