Protected Execution Facility On Power
summary
POWER9 adds a new highest-privilege Ultravisor mode that controls hardware-marked secure memory and enforces SVMs that run only when MSR S-bit is set. A toolchain (ESM generator, initramfs converter, image conversion tool) produces an ESM blob/lockbox tied to a TPM-backed key; the Ultravisor verifies integrity, moves VM pages into encrypted secure memory, and grants controlled page sharing with the hypervisor. Normal VMs run concurrently; host overhead is under ~2% and SVM runtime overhead is typically <10%. PCI passthrough is not supported; initial silicon is DD2.3 and firmware/tools are planned open source.
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chapters (24)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:16Research Funding
- 0:29Security Contras
- 0:56Objectives
- 1:38Overview
- 3:52Protected Execution
- 5:50ESM Operon
- 7:05Changes
- 9:01Route of Trust
- 10:25SVM Protection
- 17:55Firmware Implications
- 18:43Software Architecture
- 21:50VM Image Conversion
- 35:34Summary
- 36:40Questions
- 38:39Is PEPF in the hardware
- 40:16Paravirtualized KVM
- 42:37Security VM
- 46:20Security Memory Paging
- 50:06Can I use this for a host without KVM
- 51:04KVM kernel
- 52:45Secure containers
- 53:16Running unmodified OS
- 54:19EnableDisable PF
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