# Some Virtualization Papers Worth Reading

DevFeed: [Some Virtualization Papers Worth Reading](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/some-virtualization-papers-worth-reading-12495.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://brooker.co.za/blog/2020/06/08/virtualization.html>)

Author: Marc Brooker

Published: 2020-06-08T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog.md>), [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog-2.md>)

Topics: [virtualization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/virtualization.md>), [Amazon EC2](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-ec2.md>), [cloud-computing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-computing.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>), [Linux](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/linux.md>)

Tags: [amazon-ec2](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/amazon-ec2.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [cloud-computing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud-computing.md>), [comparisons](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/comparisons.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [linux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/linux.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>), [virtualization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/virtualization.md>), [x86](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/x86.md>)

## AI overview

A short, incomplete collection of virtualization papers covering foundational theory, hypervisors, hardware and software virtualization, isolation trade-offs, Linux compatibility, and the history of virtual machines and containers.

## Source excerpt

Some Virtualization Papers Worth Reading A short, and incomplete, survey. A while back, Cindy Sridharan asked on Twitter for pointers to papers on the past, present and future of virtualization. A picked a few of my favorites, and given the popularity of that thread I decided to collect some of them here. This isn't a literature survey by any means, just a collection of some papers I've found particularly interesting or useful. As usual, I'm biased towards papers I enjoyed reading, rather than those I had to slog through. Popek and Goldberg's 1974 paper Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures is rightfully a classic. They lay out a formal framework of conditions that a computer architecture must fulfill to support virtual machines. It's 45 years old, so some of the information is dated, but the framework and core ideas have stood the test of time. Xen and the Art of Virtualization, from 2003, described the Xen hypervisor and a novel technique for running secure virtualization on commodity x86 machines. The exact techniques are less interesting than they were then, mostly because of hardware virtualization features on x86 like VT-x, but the discussion of the filed and trade-offs is enlightening. Xen's influence on the industry has been huge, especially because it was used as the foundation of Amazon EC2, which triggered the following decade's explosion in cloud computing. Disco: Running Commodity Operating Systems on Scalable Multiprocessors from 1997 is very useful from a similar perspective (and thanks to Pekka Enberg for the tip on that one). Any paper that has "our approach brings back an idea popular in the 1970s" in its abstract gets my attention immediately. A Comparison of Software and Hardware Techniques for x86 Virtualization, from 2006, looks at some of the early versions of that x86 virtualization hardware and compares it to software virtualization techniques. As above, hardware has moved on since this was written, but the cri