Patent ID: 6075938
Filing Date: 2000-06-13
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A computational system comprising:a multiprocessor hardware layer comprising a plurality of functionally independent computer processors, a plurality of physical resources, including a hardware machine memory, accessible by the processors, and an interconnect providing mutual communication between the processors and resources;a virtual machine monitor (VMM) layer executing directly on the hardware layer, wherein the VMM layer comprises a resource manager that manages the physical resources of the multiprocessor, a processor manager that manages the computer processors, and a hardware emulator that creates and manages a plurality of independent virtual machines;each virtual machine having at least one virtual processor, an associated virtual machine memory, and an associated operating system;the resource manager including:a global memory manager grouping the hardware machine memory into at least private portions that are associated exclusively with respective ones of the virtual machines, and shared portions that are addressable by a plurality of the virtual machines,a virtualization sub-system means:for virtualizing the virtual machine memory of each virtual machine;upon attempted write access by any of the virtual machines to a shared portion, for allocating and associating with the virtual machine, via the global memory manager, a private portions having identical content as the shared portion for which write access was requested;the plurality of independent virtual machines thereby transparently sharing the hardware machine memory by having concurrent access to the shared portions of the hardware machine memory.