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You're reading from  Modern Computer Architecture and Organization – Second Edition - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inMay 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803234519
Edition2nd Edition
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Author (1)
Jim Ledin
Jim Ledin
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Jim Ledin

Jim Ledin is the CEO of Ledin Engineering, Inc. Jim is an expert in embedded software and hardware design and testing. He is also an expert in system cybersecurity assessment and penetration testing. He has a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University and an M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jim is a registered professional electrical engineer in California, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and a Certified Penetration Tester (CPT).
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Virtualizing modern processors

The hardware architectures of most general-purpose processor families have matured to the point where they fully support the execution of virtualized guest operating systems, at least in their higher-end variants. The following sections briefly introduce the virtualization capabilities provided by modern general-purpose processor families.

x86 processor virtualization

The x86 architecture was not originally designed to support the execution of virtualized operating systems.

As a result, x86 processors, from the earliest days through to the Pentium series, implemented instruction sets containing several unsafe but non-trapping instructions. These instructions caused problems with virtualization by, for example, allowing the guest operating system to access privileged registers that did not contain data corresponding to the state of the virtual machine.

X86 CURRENT PRIVILEGE LEVEL AND UNSAFE INSTRUCTIONS

In the x86 architecture...

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Modern Computer Architecture and Organization – Second Edition - Second Edition
Published in: May 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803234519

Author (1)

author image
Jim Ledin

Jim Ledin is the CEO of Ledin Engineering, Inc. Jim is an expert in embedded software and hardware design and testing. He is also an expert in system cybersecurity assessment and penetration testing. He has a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University and an M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jim is a registered professional electrical engineer in California, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and a Certified Penetration Tester (CPT).
Read more about Jim Ledin