Securing memory accesses in a virtualized environment

Abstract

Multiprocessor clusters in a virtualized environment conventionally fail to provide memory access security, which is frequently a requirement for efficient utilization in multi-client settings. Without adequate access security, a malicious process may access what might be confidential data that belongs to a different client sharing the multiprocessor cluster. Furthermore, an inadvertent programming error in the code for one client process may accidentally corrupt data that belongs to the different client. Neither scenario is acceptable. Embodiments of the present disclosure provide access security by enabling each processing node within a multiprocessor cluster to virtualize and manage local memory access and only process access requests possessing proper access credentials. In this way, different applications executing on a multiprocessor cluster may be isolated from each other while advantageously sharing the hardware resources of the multiprocessor cluster.