[ANNOUNCE] NOVA Microhypervisor 0.1 prerelease

[Udo A. Steinberg]

Hi,

The NOVA project is happy to announce that there is a prerelease of the
NOVA microhypervisor available for download at http://www.hypervisor.org/
or http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~us15/nova/ under the terms of the
GNU Public License version 2.

NOVA is based on a modern microhypervisor written in C++ and assembler.
It currently supports x86-32 SMP platforms with hardware virtualization
features, such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V, and facilitates running multiple
unmodified guest operating systems in virtual machines with near-native
performance. On machines without VT-x or AMD-V, the functionality is
reduced to that of a microkernel.

Like third-generation microkernels, the NOVA microhypervisor uses a
capability-based authorization model and provides only basic mechanisms for
spatial and temporal isolation, scheduling, communication and delegation of
platform resources. Additional services are provided by an unprivileged
multi-server user environment running on top of the microhypervisor.

In NOVA, we implemented almost all of the virtualization functionality in a
deprivileged user-level virtual-machine monitor. This design choice improves
the overall security of the system, because exploitation of a bug in the
platform virtualization code only compromises the VMM and leaves the
remaining components unaffected.

Cheers,

        - Udo

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