Virtual Machines and Handling Memory and System Calls

Question

This is a homework problem that I have. I have been doing some research and couldn't find much. I did find a powerpoint but could not make much sense of it due to lack of text.

http://xen.org/files/xensummit_tokyo/19_KoichiOnoue_en.pdf

(Specifically, what is gPa and hPa?)

I was wondering if anyone could point me in the correct direction of where to look next.

Here is the question:

Explain how one could virtualize system calls issued by Pguest so that they are serviced by kernel code of the guest OS (mapped into the address space of Pguest). How do you differentiate and control the switching between application and kernel stacks in Pguest? In your answer, include a diagram that shows how control is redirected between various parts of memory, to handle virtualized system calls.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

These are "guest physical address" and "host physical address".

I hesitate to go into too much detail when it is coursework. You need to do the legwork yourself or you will not learn the material and you risk failing the exams/tests.

Hopefully you know how memory-mapping works at the OS kernel and CPU levels. You will find lots more material if you just search Google for the three keywords gpa hpa and VM.