Virtual Processors as Kernel Interface
After virtualization has gained traction in a variety of fields ranging from the desktop computer to datacenter servers, it is likely to make inroads into embedded systems as well. The complexity of a VM implementation depends on the virtualization abilities of the processor used. Unfortunately, the instruction set architecture of many popular embedded CPUs is not virtualizable, which precludes efficient pure or faithful virtualization. In this paper, the authors make the case for Operating System (OS) rehosting, a flavor of virtualization that lends itself to implementations of low complexity and does not rely an CPU virtualization extensions.