IO Visor Project Aims for Universal In-Kernel Linux VM

A new IO Visor Project has been launched by The Linux Foundation with a mission to advance IO and networking technologies to address new requirements presented by cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

The idea is to create a universal in-kernel virtual machine with run-time extensibility -- essentially, "a new type of programmable data plane that enables developers to dynamically build IO modules (think stand alone “programs” that can manipulate a packet in the kernel and perform all sort of functions on it), load and unload those in-kernel at run time and do it without any disruption to the system." The IO modules would be able to run on any hardware that supports Linux.

The core technology behind IO Visor Project is eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter). The IO Visor Project is supported initially with contributions from PLUMgrid.

Founding members of IO Visor include Barefoot Networks, Broadcom, Canonical, Cavium, Cisco, Huawei, Intel, PLUMgrid and SUSE.

“The ability to modify a Linux kernel at runtime without rebooting the server or entire data center is critical to efficient operation of SDN and NFV technologies,” said Pere Monclus, founder and CTO at PLUMgrid. “As a company that actively supports a number of open source projects, we believe that open sourcing IO Visor through a community hosted with the Linux Foundation was in the best interests of not only our company, but of everyone dependent upon agile and highly performant cloud technologies at scale.”

http://www.plumgrid.com/press-releases/2015/08/new-io-visor-project-to-advance-linux-networking-and-virtualization-for-modern-data-centers/
https://www.iovisor.org/