Running on AMD systems


Lonnie Cumberland <lonnie@...>
 

Hi All,

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

Best
Lonnie


Geoffroy Van Cutsem
 

Hi Lonnie,

 

Happy New Year to you too!! :-)

 

The short answer is that we have not tested ACRN on AMD processors. I strongly suspect that ACRN will not run on AMD at this stage due to the differences in the HW-assisted virtualization extensions (Intel VT vs. AMD-V). Having said that, please let us know if you get it to work! We’d also be happy to take patches if you create a port for AMD.

 

Best regards,

Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 9:09 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi All,

 

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

 

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

 

Best

Lonnie

 


Lonnie Cumberland <lonnie@...>
 

Hi Geoffroy,

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I will see what I can do, but highly doubt that I have the skillset to make the patches for it to run on AMD. I will give it a try though.

There aren't by chance any developers that I might be able to contract to help get the AMD version running is there?  Like I mentioned, I will give it a try, but do not have much confidence in my possible success.

On another question, I was reading over the documentation and it seems that ACRN is limited to the number of VM's that it can concurrently run. Is that correct?   What I had come across has to do with Pre-Loaded VM limits which seems to suggest that a max of 7 was possible. Perhaps I missed something.

Best Regard as well,
Lonnie


On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 12:24 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

Happy New Year to you too!! :-)

 

The short answer is that we have not tested ACRN on AMD processors. I strongly suspect that ACRN will not run on AMD at this stage due to the differences in the HW-assisted virtualization extensions (Intel VT vs. AMD-V). Having said that, please let us know if you get it to work! We’d also be happy to take patches if you create a port for AMD.

 

Best regards,

Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 9:09 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi All,

 

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

 

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

 

Best

Lonnie

 


Geoffroy Van Cutsem
 

Hi Lonnie,

 

I would go first to the acrn-dev mailing list [1] if you have more detailed questions on how to port to AMD, the core developers are watching that one and much less this acrn-users mailing list. I do not know if they have specific knowledge on AMD-V but they would at least be able to guide through the ACRN architecture and content of the source code folders.

 

The numbers of VMs that can be run by ACRN is something that is defined in the ACRN configuration. It’s a pre-build configuration, not a runtime configuration, which means that any ACRN binary has a limit that’s potentially different. And to change that, you need to modify the configuration and rebuild ACRN. How many VMs would you like to concurrently run?

 

If you use one of our pre-defined configuration, the “industry” scenario is the one that can run the most VMs, 8 in total (but keep in mind that the Service VM is also a VM, so that’s 7 User VMs).

 

[1] https://lists.projectacrn.org/g/acrn-dev

 

Hope this helps!
Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021 7:01 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi Geoffroy,

 

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I will see what I can do, but highly doubt that I have the skillset to make the patches for it to run on AMD. I will give it a try though.

 

There aren't by chance any developers that I might be able to contract to help get the AMD version running is there?  Like I mentioned, I will give it a try, but do not have much confidence in my possible success.

 

On another question, I was reading over the documentation and it seems that ACRN is limited to the number of VM's that it can concurrently run. Is that correct?   What I had come across has to do with Pre-Loaded VM limits which seems to suggest that a max of 7 was possible. Perhaps I missed something.

 

Best Regard as well,

Lonnie

 

 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 12:24 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

Happy New Year to you too!! :-)

 

The short answer is that we have not tested ACRN on AMD processors. I strongly suspect that ACRN will not run on AMD at this stage due to the differences in the HW-assisted virtualization extensions (Intel VT vs. AMD-V). Having said that, please let us know if you get it to work! We’d also be happy to take patches if you create a port for AMD.

 

Best regards,

Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 9:09 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi All,

 

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

 

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

 

Best

Lonnie

 


Lonnie Cumberland <lonnie@...>
 

Thanks my friend.

I just subscribed to the developers list.

I truly appreciate you taking the time to try and answer my questions while I get a better feel for ACRN.
Cheers,
Lonnie


On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 6:09 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

I would go first to the acrn-dev mailing list [1] if you have more detailed questions on how to port to AMD, the core developers are watching that one and much less this acrn-users mailing list. I do not know if they have specific knowledge on AMD-V but they would at least be able to guide through the ACRN architecture and content of the source code folders.

 

The numbers of VMs that can be run by ACRN is something that is defined in the ACRN configuration. It’s a pre-build configuration, not a runtime configuration, which means that any ACRN binary has a limit that’s potentially different. And to change that, you need to modify the configuration and rebuild ACRN. How many VMs would you like to concurrently run?

 

If you use one of our pre-defined configuration, the “industry” scenario is the one that can run the most VMs, 8 in total (but keep in mind that the Service VM is also a VM, so that’s 7 User VMs).

 

[1] https://lists.projectacrn.org/g/acrn-dev

 

Hope this helps!
Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021 7:01 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi Geoffroy,

 

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I will see what I can do, but highly doubt that I have the skillset to make the patches for it to run on AMD. I will give it a try though.

 

There aren't by chance any developers that I might be able to contract to help get the AMD version running is there?  Like I mentioned, I will give it a try, but do not have much confidence in my possible success.

 

On another question, I was reading over the documentation and it seems that ACRN is limited to the number of VM's that it can concurrently run. Is that correct?   What I had come across has to do with Pre-Loaded VM limits which seems to suggest that a max of 7 was possible. Perhaps I missed something.

 

Best Regard as well,

Lonnie

 

 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 12:24 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

Happy New Year to you too!! :-)

 

The short answer is that we have not tested ACRN on AMD processors. I strongly suspect that ACRN will not run on AMD at this stage due to the differences in the HW-assisted virtualization extensions (Intel VT vs. AMD-V). Having said that, please let us know if you get it to work! We’d also be happy to take patches if you create a port for AMD.

 

Best regards,

Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 9:09 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi All,

 

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

 

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

 

Best

Lonnie

 


Geoffroy Van Cutsem
 

My pleasure! ;-)

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2021 12:36 AM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Thanks my friend.

 

I just subscribed to the developers list.

 

I truly appreciate you taking the time to try and answer my questions while I get a better feel for ACRN.

Cheers,

Lonnie

 

 

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 6:09 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

I would go first to the acrn-dev mailing list [1] if you have more detailed questions on how to port to AMD, the core developers are watching that one and much less this acrn-users mailing list. I do not know if they have specific knowledge on AMD-V but they would at least be able to guide through the ACRN architecture and content of the source code folders.

 

The numbers of VMs that can be run by ACRN is something that is defined in the ACRN configuration. It’s a pre-build configuration, not a runtime configuration, which means that any ACRN binary has a limit that’s potentially different. And to change that, you need to modify the configuration and rebuild ACRN. How many VMs would you like to concurrently run?

 

If you use one of our pre-defined configuration, the “industry” scenario is the one that can run the most VMs, 8 in total (but keep in mind that the Service VM is also a VM, so that’s 7 User VMs).

 

[1] https://lists.projectacrn.org/g/acrn-dev

 

Hope this helps!
Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021 7:01 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi Geoffroy,

 

Thanks for getting back to me on this and I will see what I can do, but highly doubt that I have the skillset to make the patches for it to run on AMD. I will give it a try though.

 

There aren't by chance any developers that I might be able to contract to help get the AMD version running is there?  Like I mentioned, I will give it a try, but do not have much confidence in my possible success.

 

On another question, I was reading over the documentation and it seems that ACRN is limited to the number of VM's that it can concurrently run. Is that correct?   What I had come across has to do with Pre-Loaded VM limits which seems to suggest that a max of 7 was possible. Perhaps I missed something.

 

Best Regard as well,

Lonnie

 

 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 12:24 PM Geoffroy Van Cutsem <geoffroy.vancutsem@...> wrote:

Hi Lonnie,

 

Happy New Year to you too!! :-)

 

The short answer is that we have not tested ACRN on AMD processors. I strongly suspect that ACRN will not run on AMD at this stage due to the differences in the HW-assisted virtualization extensions (Intel VT vs. AMD-V). Having said that, please let us know if you get it to work! We’d also be happy to take patches if you create a port for AMD.

 

Best regards,

Geoffroy

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Lonnie Cumberland
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 9:09 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Running on AMD systems

 

Hi All,

 

First of all, I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Not sure if I have asked this, or if it has already come up, but I was wondering if ACRN will run on AMD processors.  Actually, I am looking for an extremely small footprint monolithic  hypervisor that can run on AMD and Intel processors as I investigate Uni-kernel approaches for JEOS streamlined applications.

 

Hoping that ACRN can be a good starting point for this effort that I have had in mind for a very long time now.

 

Best

Lonnie