Patent ID: 8762991

Claim:
A system comprising: a platform having virtualization capabilities; at least one processor coupled to the platform, the at least one processor to run a general-purpose operating system (GPOS) in a first virtual machine (VM) on the platform; and a domain specific run-time environment (DSRTE) partitioned into a plurality of portions, wherein a first portion comprises non-performance critical processes to run under the GPOS in the first VM, and wherein at least one additional portion comprises at least one performance critical process on the platform outside of the first VM running the GPOS, wherein the at least one additional portion comprises a second VM including a non-privileged VM, wherein a privileged virtual machine monitor (VMM) controls execution of each VM on the platform, wherein the privileged VMM comprises a privileged root domain comprising a virtual machine monitor (VMM), wherein the at least one performance critical process is to run in a second virtual machine, wherein at least one additional portion is customized to execute the at least one performance critical process, and wherein the at least one performance critical process is to run in the privileged root domain, wherein the privileged root domain operates in virtualization technology (VT) mode on the platform and is to be entered in response to a VM-EXIT event, and is to return control to a VM in response to a VM-ENTER event, and wherein initiating a performance critical task is to generate a VM-EXIT from the GPOS in the first VM, wherein the VT mode includes a VT-root mode to enable a VT-root execution of the performance critical process, wherein an unmodified GPOS is loaded and run in a non-VT-root mode.