<div class='slidealt'>Virtualization research projects <a title='ARM multicore kvm open source' href='/en/research'>in cloud and embedded systems</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Virtualization solutions for heterogeneous <a title='ARMv7-ARMv8 virtualization open source solutions' href='/en/solutions'>ARM multicore systems</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Benefit from custom <a title='kvm on arm services full virtualization' href='/en/services'>virtualization services</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Experience kvm <a title='virtualization for embedded heterogeneous arm core platforms' href='/en/products'>virtualization extensions</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>KVM on ARMv7 and ARMv8 <a title='kvm-on-arm open source smu extensions' href='/en/solutions/guides/vfio-on-arm/'>IOMMU full virtualization</a></div>

Introduction to virtualization use cases

Introduction to virtualization use cases

Nowadays, we are assisting to increase interest in virtualization for all market segments due to the huge benefits virtualization techniques bring in term of system cost saving, power aware architecture designs, isolation and security, legacy supporting in next generation solutions.

For instance, in a data center virtualization allows to save power by consolidating workloads in servers, avoiding servers running at a very low load to consume a huge amount of energy. With virtualization it is possible to migrate Virtual machines from one server to another so reducing the number of active servers. Another example where virtualization is used is when replacing old hardware with newer one; in this context, virtualization helps to provide a full original environment which mimics the old hardware and runs the legacy applications.

Another usage of the virtualization is to enable the sand-boxing of applications that increase the security by running potentially insecure applications inside a guest virtual machine, so that an application runs in its isolated environment.

Virtualization pervades all modern SoC implementations in many segments

Allowing for increasing flexibility and security, hardware supported software virtualization techniques are becoming more and more popular in modern systems on chip (SoC) in support of all relevant market segments, such as but not limited to mobile, consumer, industrial, automotive, computing, etc. Implementing custom requirements in virtualized modern systems is instrumental to assure competitive advantages to SoC and system makers.