System-Level Virtualization for High Performance Computing

System-level virtualization has been a research topic since the 70’s but regained popularity during the past few years because of the availability of efficient solution such as Xen and the implementation of hardware support in commodity processors (e.g. Intel-VT, AMD-V). However, a majority of system-level virtualization projects is guided by the server consolidation market. As a result, current virtualization solutions appear to not be suitable for high performance computing (HPC) which is typically based on large-scale systems. On another hand there is significant interest in exploiting virtual machines (VMs) within HPC for a number of other reasons. By virtualizing the machine, one is able to run a variety of operating systems and environments as needed by the applications. Virtualization allows users to isolate workloads, improving security and reliability. It is also possible to support nonnative environments and/or legacy operating environments through virtualization. In add...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: PDP
• Authors: Geoffroy Vallée, Thomas Naughton, Christian Engelmann, Hong Ong, Stephen L. Scott
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, PDP 2008, System-level Virtualization, System-level Virtualization Projects, Virtualization Solution