VCDC: The Virtualized Complicated Device Controller

I/O virtualization enables time and space multiplexing of I/O devices, by mapping multiple logical I/O devices upon a smaller number of physical devices. However, due to the existence of additional virtualization layers, requesting an I/O from a guest virtual machine requires complicated sequences of operations. This leads to I/O performance losses, and makes precise timing of I/O operations unpredictable. This paper proposes a hardware I/O virtualization system, termed the Virtualized Complicated Device Controller (VCDC). This I/O system allows user applications to access and operate I/O devices directly from guest VMs, and bypasses the guest OS, the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) and low layer I/O drivers. We show that the VCDC efficiently reduces the software overhead and enhances the I/O performance and timing predictability. Furthermore, VCDC also exhibits good scalability that can handle I/O requests from variable number of CPUs in a system