VMI: An Interface for Paravirtualization

Abstract Paravirtualization has a lot of promise, in par- ticular in its ability to deliver performance,by allowing the hypervisor to be aware of the id- ioms in the operating system. Since kernel changes are necessary, it is very easy to get into a situation where the paravirtualized kernel is incapable of executing on a native machine, or on another hypervisor. It is also quite easy to expose too many hypervisor implementation details in the name of performance, which can impede,the general development,of the kernel with many hypervisor specific subtleties. VMI, or the Virtual Machine Interface, is a