[BitVisor-devel-en:86] UEFI Multicore?

[Dr. Lonnie Cumberland, PhD]

Hello All,

Although I am just getting started with bitvisor and also uefi coding, I 
have been doing some initial research on a fundamental question that I 
have as it relates to the bitvisor extension project that I am doing.

In my reading about uefi applications, the information seems to suggest 
that there is not any real type of threading in the normal sense that we 
use it in programming, but that the uefi application typically uses only 
a single "core" for the application.  Upon further reading, it also 
seems that you can start up and use other cores as well which made me 
wonder if bitvisor is all run on a single core in a single thread?

I ask, because if it is then I wonder what it might take to run the 
networking (i.e. L2 vSwitch or L3 vRouter) on their own independent core?

The question stems from the recent ideas in network stacks that are 
working towards zero-copy and kernel-bypass so that packet processing 
can be significantly enhanced by taking control of the network card and 
pushing the application interface into user space. Some of this is 
starting to happen on servers with specific hardware for it through 
things like DPDK (i.e. Demikernel from Microsoft and others), but it 
made me wonder if bitvisor could push a vRouter, for example, onto it 
own core and run the other parts as normal in bitvisor.

It kind of reminds me of building out Unikernels for networking with 
frameworks like "IncludeOS" and others that seem to show huge gains in 
network routers/switches when removed from the kernel and given a 
dedicated system core.

It's just a crazy thought and would require much more research to get a 
good feel for it, but I just thought that I would ask on the developers 
mailing list to see what types of thoughts and discussions it might set 
into motion.

Best Regards and have a great day,
Lonnie
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