System-level virtualization is today enjoying a rebirth, after first gaining popularity in the 1970s as a technique to effectively share what were then considered large computing resources to subsequently fade from the spotlight as individual workstations gained in popularity with a “one machine – one user” approach. One reason for this resurgence is that the simple workstation has grown in capability to rival that of anything available in the past. Thus, computing centers are again looking at the price/performance benefit of sharing that single computing box via server consolidation. Hardware and software technology vendors have noticed this renewed interest as well and have responded with a variety of technologies designed to enable advanced virtualization capabilities. However, industry is only concentrating on the benefits of using virtualization for server consolidation (enterprise computing) whereas our interest is in leveraging virtualization to advance high-performan...
Stephen L. Scott, Geoffroy Vallée, Thomas N