Dissertation Proposal Webcast

Info

When: March 22, 2010 at 3:15pm EST

Outcome: I passed!!!

Dissertation Proposal

A Framework for Virtual Device Driver Development and Virtual Device-Based Performance Modeling

Abstract
Operating system virtualization tools such as VMWare, XEN, and Linux KVM export only minimally capable SVGA graphics adapters. This paper describes the design and implementation of system that virtualizes high-performance graphics cards of arbitrary design to support the construction of authentic device drivers. Drivers written for the virtual cards can be used verbatim, without special function calls or kernel modifications, as drivers for real cards, should real cards of the same design exist. The applications of the system include both instruction in device driver design and allowing device driver design to proceed in parallel with new hardware development. While this allows for arbitrary design, it is not able to model performance characteristics. We propose the a new kernel system that allows for arbitrarily changing the performance of a device. These virtual performance throttles (VPTs) use an model of the performance of a physical device with the framework provided by the virtual device architecture.

Paper: PDF
Presentation: PDF

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Special Thanks

Goes to Will Pressly for helping with setting up and managing the webcast.
Goes to Glenn Sidney of glennfu.com for the site design.