Intel Corporation

Fujin Huang

Vincent J Zimmer

Michael A Rothman

Hua Zhou

Yi Qian

Junwei Chen

In a computing system, sharing a physical NIC device among multiple virtual machines may be implemented by a customer virtual machine by receiving, by a virtual network interface card (NIC) driver of a customer operating system (OS) running in the customer virtual machine on a computing system, a customer OS request packet for transmission by a physical NIC driver over a network coupled to the computing system, and copying at least a portion of the customer OS request packet into a free block of shared memory of the computing system and appending the block to a transmission queue in the shared memory. Next, a service virtual machine may support the implementation by fetching the block from the transmission queue by a virtual NIC driver of a service OS running in a service virtual machine and packaging the portion into a service OS request packet, passing the service OS request packet to a service OS network stack component of the service OS, routing the service OS request packet, by a bridge driver of the service OS network stack component, to the physical NIC driver, and sending the service OS request packet over the network by the physical NIC driver.

Method for network interface sharing among multiple virtual machines

In a computing system having a processor package, an operating system, and a physical I/O device, a partial virtual machine is provided to instantiate a virtual I/O device corresponding to the physical I/O device, the virtual I/O device having a virtual I/O controller. The partial virtual machine includes an I/O port trap to capture an I/O request to the virtual I/O device by the operating system; an I/O controller emulator coupled to the I/O port trap to handle an I/O control request to the virtual I/O controller, when the I/O request comprises an I/O control request; an I/O device emulator coupled to the I/O port trap component to handle an I/O access request to communicate with the virtual I/O device, when the I/O request comprises an I/O access request; and a device driver coupled to the I/O controller emulator and the I/O device emulator to communicate with the physical I/O device based at least in part on the I/O control request and the I/O access request. The partial virtual machine executes within a secure enclave session within the processor package, improving security of I/O transactions by preventing access to the partial virtual machine by the operating system.

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Shanghai, China

Fujin Huang