Simulators for Processors used in Virtualization: A Survey

Simulation imitates the modeled system to the desired level of details in the desired time. Cloud computing shares the resources, and virtualization is the key technology that enables cloud computing. Sharing of resources with virtualization raised many security concerns, leading to the development of processors enhanced for security in virtualization and consequently to the need for architectural simulators for processors used in a virtualized environment. Architectural simulators have already been classified taking into account the simulation of the operating system instructions. The objective of this paper is to propose an extension to the classification of architectural simulators taking into account the simulation of the hypervisor instructions, a factor that has been left largely untouched in existing research and surveys on the topic. The challenges in the simulation of processors used in a virtualized environment are manifold, and in this work, they are identified, highlighting the challenges that have been resolved and unresolved in the existing simulators. The paper concludes that there are many challenges that are yet to be resolved for performing accurate timing simulation of processors used in virtualization.