Udo Steinberg

NOVA is a modern open-source microhypervisor that can host unmodified guest operating systems next to critical host applications. After adding support for multiple instruction sets (ARMv8-A and x86_64), NOVA's code base has been restructured to share as much code between architectures as possible. I will give an overview of the new abstractions that make NOVA fit for the next decade and discuss how advanced features, such as boot-time relocation and code patching, multiple resource spaces, support for suspend/resume, cache allocation technology, control-flow protection and multi-key total memory encryption have increased NOVA's flexibility, security and performance even further.

Panel discussion and an extended Q&A session on the state of microkernel-based operating systems in 2021 and related topics. The panelists (in order of acceptance):

• Martin Decky (HelenOS, Huawei)
• Jakub Jermar (Kernkonzept, HelenOS)
• Norman Feske (Genode Labs)
• Julian Stecklina (Cyberus)
• Udo Steinberg (BedRock Systems)
• Matthias Lange (Kernkonzept)
• Gernot Heiser (seL4)

The discussion will smoothly evolve into the traditional and less formal "microkernel dinner". Please bring your own food and beverages.

Other people: Jakub Jermář Martin Děcký Norman Feske Julian Stecklina Matthias Lange Gernot Heiser

NOVA is a modern open-source microhypervisor that can host unmodified guest operating systems next to critical host applications. Although originally developed for the x86 virtualization extensions of Intel and AMD, the internals of the microhypervisor and its external API were designed with flexibility in mind, such that the code could also be ported to other architectures.

In this talk we present the first ever version of NOVA on ARMv8-A. We will show how the NOVA abstractions map onto the ARM architecture, how modern virtualization features such as GIC and SMMU are being used, discuss the ongoing evolution of the NOVA API and how the ARM port differs from the earlier x86 version.

The talk will conclude with a short demo, an outlook into the NOVA roadmap and the formal verification efforts around the code base, as well as opportunities for collaboration with the NOVA community.

The NOVA microhypervisor combines microkernel and hypervisor functionality and provides an extremely small trusted computing base for user applications and virtual machines running on top of it. The microhypervisor implements a capability-based authorization model and provides basic mechanisms for virtualization, spatial and temporal separation, scheduling, communication, and management of platform resources. The talk will focus on the hypervisor interface and how it can be used by a multi-server environment to manage platform resources, virtual machines, and user applications. After introducing the capability concept and the basic communication mechanisms, more advanced topics such as IOMMU support and real-time scheduling will be discussed.