Performance Analysis of Microkernel Based Virtualization Techniques on Embedded Systems

Exploiting the benefits of Virtualization in the world of Embedded technology has opened up new avenues for effective resource utilization, increased scalability, security and cost savings. With the above in perspective, the performance benchmarking of virtualized embedded systems is important. In this paper, we have assessed the performance of various types of virtualization techniques such as paravirtualization and hardware-assisted virtualization in a desktop environment. Microkernel based virtualization techniques are more suitable for embedded system environment, due to its low memory footprint and security advantages as only a small amount of trusted code is running at a high privileged level. We have used this implementation to analyze the performance of an OS on a microkernel based virtual environment and compared its performance with an OS in a nonvirtual environment on the same board. In addition to this, we have analyzed the performance of different types of virtualization techniques possible with a microkernel on a low power arm based embedded system with a benchmarking tool.