acrn-hypervisor/doc/glossary.rst

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.. _glossary:
Glossary of Terms
#################
.. glossary::
:sorted:
AaaG
LaaG
WaaG
Acronyms for Android, Linux, and Windows as a Guest VM. ACRN supports a
variety of :term:`User VM` OS choices. Your choice depends on the
needs of your application. For example, Windows is popular for
Human-Machine Interface (HMI) applications in industrial applications,
while Linux is a likely OS choice for a VM running an AI application.
ACPI
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
ACRN
ACRN is a flexible, lightweight reference hypervisor, built with
real-time and safety-criticality in mind, optimized to streamline
embedded development through an open source platform.
API
Application Program Interface: A defined set of routines and protocols for
building application software.
APL
Apollo Lake platform
BDW
Broadwell, Intel 5th-generation CPU platform
BIOS
Basic Input/Output System.
DM
Device Model
An application within the Service VM responsible for creating and
launching a User VM and then performing device emulation for the devices
configured for sharing with that User VM. The Service VM and Device Model
can access hardware resources directly through native drivers and provide
device sharing services to User VMs. User VMs can access hardware devices
directly if they've been configured as passthrough devices.
Development Computer
Host
As with most IoT development environments, you configure, compile, and
build your application on a separate system from where the application is
deployed and run (i.e., the :term:`Target`). ACRN recommends using Ubuntu
18.04 as the OS on your development computer and that is an assumption in
our documentation.
Guest
Guest VM
A term used to refer to any :term:`VM` that runs on the hypervisor. Both Service
and User VMs are considered Guest VMs from the hypervisor's perspective,
albeit with different properties. *(You'll find the term Guest used in the
names of functions and variables in the ACRN source code.)*
GVT-d
Virtual dedicated graphics acceleration (one VM to one physical GPU).
Hybrid
One of three operation scenarios (partitioned, shared, and hybrid) that ACRN supports.
In the hybrid mode, some physical hardware resources can be partitioned to
individual User VMs while others are shared across User VMs.
IDT
Interrupt Descriptor Table: a data structure used by the x86
architecture to implement an interrupt vector table. The IDT is used
to determine the correct response to interrupts and exceptions.
ISR
Interrupt Service Routine: Also known as an interrupt handler, an ISR
is a callback function whose execution is triggered by a hardware
interrupt (or software interrupt instructions) and is used to handle
high-priority conditions that require interrupting the code currently
executing on the processor.
Passthrough Device
Physical I/O devices (typically PCI) exclusively assigned to a User VM so
that the VM can access the hardware device directly and with minimal (if any)
VM management involvement. Normally, the Service VM owns the hardware
devices shared among User VMs and virtualized access is done through
Device Model emulation.
Partitioned
One of three operation scenarios (partitioned, shared, and hybrid) that ACRN supports.
Physical hardware resources are dedicated to individual User VMs.
Pre-launched VM
A :term:`User VM` launched by the hypervisor before the :term:`Service VM`
is started. Such a User VM runs independently of and is partitioned from
the Service VM and other post-launched VMs. It has its own carefully
configured and dedicated hardware resources such as CPUs, memory, and I/O
devices. Other VMs, including the Service VM, may not even be aware of a
pre-launched VM's existence. A pre-launched VM can be used as a
special-case :term:`Safety VM` for reacting to critical system failures.
It cannot take advantage of the Service VM or Device Model services.
Post-launched VM
A :term:`User VM` configured and launched by the Service VM and typically
accessing shared hardware resources managed by the Service VM and Device
Model. Most User VMs are post-launched while special-purpose User VMs are
pre-launched.
QEMU
Quick EMUlator. Machine emulator running in user space.
RDT
Intel Resource Director Technology (Intel RDT) provides a set of
monitoring and allocation capabilities to control resources such as
Cache and Memory. ACRN supports Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) and
Memory Bandwidth Allocation (MBA).
RTVM
Real-time VM
A :term:`User VM` configured specifically for real-time applications and
their performance needs. ACRN supports near bare-metal performance for a
post-launched real-time VM by configuring certain key technologies or
enabling device-passthrough to avoid common virtualization and
device-access overhead issues. Such technologies include: using a
passthrough interrupt controller, polling-mode Virtio, Intel RDT
allocation features (CAT, MBA), and I/O prioritization. RTVMs are
typically a :term:`Pre-launched VM`. A non-:term:`Safety VM` with
real-time requirements is a :term:`Post-launched VM`.
Safety VM
A special VM with dedicated hardware resources for providing overall
system health-monitoring functionality. A safety VM is always a
pre-launched User VM, either in a partitioned or hybrid scenario.
Scenario
A collection of hypervisor and VM configuration settings that define an
ACRN-based application's environment. A scenario configuration is stored
in a scenario XML file and edited using the ACRN configurator tool. The
scenario configuration, along with the target board configuration, is used
by the ACRN build system to modify the source code to build tailored
images of the hypervisor and Service VM for the application. ACRN provides
example scenarios for shared, partitioned, and hybrid configurations that
developers can use to define a scenario configuration appropriate for
their own application.
SOS
Service OS
Service VM
A special VM, directly launched by the hypervisor. The Service VM can
access hardware resources directly by running native drivers and provides
device sharing services to post-launched User VMs through the ACRN Device
Model (DM). Hardware resources include CPUs, memory, graphics memory, USB
devices, disk, and network mediation. *(Historically, the Service VM was
called the Service OS or SOS. You may still see these terms used in the
code and API interfaces.)*
Industry
Shared
One of three operation scenarios (shared, hybrid, partitioned) that ACRN supports.
Most of the physical hardware resources are shared across User VMs.
*(Industry scenario is being renamed to Shared in the v2.7 release.)*
Target
This is the hardware where the configured ACRN hypervisor and
developer-written application (built on the :term:`Development Computer`) is
deployed and runs.
UEFI
Unified Extensible Firmare Interface. UEFI replaces the
traditional BIOS on PCs, while also providing BIOS emulation for
backward compatibility. UEFI can run in 32-bit or 64-bit mode and, more
important, support Secure Boot, checking the OS validity to ensure no
malware has tampered with the boot process.
UOS
User OS
User VM
A :term:`VM` where user-defined environments and applications run. User VMs can
run different OSes based on their needs, including for example, Ubuntu for
an AI application, Android or Windows for a Human-Machine Interface, or a
hard real-time control OS such as Zephyr, VxWorks, or RT-Linux for soft or
hard real-time control. There are three types of ACRN User VMs: pre-launched,
post-launched standard, and post-launched real-time. *(Historically, a
User VM was also called a User OS, or simply UOS. You may still see these
other terms used in the code and API interfaces.)*
VM
Virtual Machine
A compute resource that uses software instead of physical hardware to run a
program. Multiple VMs can run independently on the same physical machine,
and with their own OS. A hypervisor uses direct access to the underlying
machine to create the software environment for sharing and managing
hardware resources.
VMM
Virtual Machine Monitor
VMX
Virtual Machine Extension
VT
Intel Virtualization Technology
VT-d
Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O