Analysis of Intel IA-64 Processor Support for a Secure Virtual Machine Monitor

This thesis explores the Intel IA-64 architecture's capability to support a secure virtual machine monitor. The major mission of a virtual machine monitor is to provide an execution environment identical to the real machine environment for virtual machines. A VMM duplicates the real resources of a processor for virtual machines while making a virtual machine think that it is running on a real machine. As a result, a virtual machine monitor allows multiple virtual machines to run concurrently on the same machine. A secure VMM on the Intel IA-64 architecture would offer several benefits. A secure VMM would ensure that security policy is enforced by constraining information flow between the supported virtual machines. This would provide PC users with a more secure environment in which to run COTS operating systems. The Intel IA-64 architecture was analyzed to determine if it is virtualizable. Three types of virtual machine monitors and their hardware requirements have been defined. The IA-64 architecture was mapped to these hardware requirements. Analysis showed that the IA-64 architecture meets three main hardware requirements. However, IA-64 instruction set contains 18 sensitive unprivileged instructions. These instructions prevent the IA-64 architecture from being used for a Type I VMM. Several virtualization techniques used in some architectures are discussed to determine if these techniques could be applicable to virtualization of the IA-64 architecture.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Analysis of Intel IA-64 Processor Support for a Secure Virtual Machine Monitor', published 2001 under ISBN 9781423528975 and ISBN 1423528972.