Speaker
Description
ARM SystemReady defines a standard firmware-to-OS boot path via UEFI, but provides no standard mechanism for booting Type 1 hypervisors such as Gunyah or Xen. Platforms relying on Type 1 hypervisors to isolate security- or latency-sensitive workloads, lack a standardized boot flow, which creates fragmentation across mobile, IoT, and compute ecosystems.
We have implemented a solution for this across three areas. First, we propose extensions to the UKI format to bundle a Type 1 hypervisor and its static guest VM images in a single UEFI secure-boot authenticated image. Second, we discuss the required changes to systemd-stub to parse the extended UKI to extract and pass configuration data to the hypervisor at boot. Third, we have prototyped support to the systemd-boot tooling to control and maintain this configuration.
By aligning with both the Xen and Gunyah communities, the goal is to enable a vendor-neutral, standards-compliant boot flow for any Type 1 hypervisor, using UKI.
Topics to be discussed:
1. UKI extensions for Type 1 hypervisors
2. Interface between systemd-stub and hypervisor
3. Configuration data passed to the hypervisor