Vmware, Inc.

Jared McNeill

Andrei Warkentin

Sunil Kumar Kotian

Shruthi Muralidhara Hiriyuru

Cyprien Laplace

Alexander Fainkichen

David A Dunn

Timothy P Mann

Karthik Ramachandra

Anil Veliyankaramadam

Grant Foudree

A hybrid scheme is provided for performing translation lookaside buffer (TLB) shootdowns in a computer system whose processing cores support both inter-processor interrupt (IPI) and broadcast TLB invalidate (TLBI) shootdown mechanisms. In one set of embodiments, this hybrid scheme dynamically determines, for each instance where a TLB shootdown is needed, whether to use the IPI mechanism or the broadcast TLBI mechanism to optimize shootdown performance (or otherwise make the TLB shootdown operation functional/practical).

Hybrid scheme for performing translation lookaside buffer (TLB) shootdowns

Disclosed are various examples of provisioning a data processing unit (DPU) management operating system using a capsule. A management hypervisor installer executed on a host device receives a listing DPU device from a baseboard management controller (BMC). A preinstalled DPU management operating system image is identified for a DPU device from the listing, and is wrapped with a capsule that specifies the capsule as a DPU management operating system image capsule. A server component provides the DPU management operating system image capsule at a particular URI, and the URI is transmitted to the BMC.

Provisioning DPU management operating systems using firmware capsules

A combined data processing unit (DPU) and server solution with DPU operating system (OS) integration is described. A DPU OS is executed on a DPU or other computing device, where the DPU OS exercises secure calls provided by a DPU's trusted firmware component, that may be invoked by DPU OS components to abstract DPU vendor-specific and server vendor-specific integration details. An invocation of one of the secure calls made on the DPU to communicate with its associated server computing device is identified. In an instance in which the one of the secure calls is invoked, the secure call invoked is translated into a call or request specific to an architecture of the server computing device and the call is performed, which may include sending a signal to the server computing device in a format interpretable by the server computing device.

Mechanism for integrating I/O hypervisor with a combined DPU and server solution

Boot failure protection on smartNICs and other computing devices is described. During a power-on stage of a booting process for a computing device, a boot loading environment is directed to install an application programming interface (API) able to be invoked to control operation of a hardware-implemented watchdog. During an operating system loading stage of the booting process, the application programming interface is invoked to enable the hardware-implemented watchdog. During an operating system hand-off stage of the booting process, a last watchdog refresh of the hardware-implemented watchdog is performed, and execution of the boot loading environment is handed off to a kernel boot loader of an operating system. The application programming interface may not be accessible after the hand off to the kernel boot loader.

Boot failure protection on smartNICs and other computing devices

A hardware-assisted paravirtualized hardware watchdog is described that is used to detect and recover from computer malfunctions. A computing device determines that a hardware-implemented watchdog of the computing device does not comply with predetermined watchdog criteria, where the hardware-implemented watchdog is configured to send a reset signal when a first predetermined amount of time elapses without receipt of a first refresh signal. If the hardware-implemented watchdog does not comply with the predetermined watchdog criteria, a runtime watchdog service is initialized using a second predetermined amount of time. The runtime watchdog service is directed to periodically send the refresh signal to the hardware-implemented watchdog before an expiration of the first predetermined amount of time that causes the hardware-implemented watchdog to expire. The hardware-implemented watchdog is directed to send the reset signal when the second predetermined amount of time elapses without receipt of a second refresh signal.

Growing community of inventors

Quispamsis, Canada

Jared McNeill