Blink: Advanced Display Multiplexing for Virtualized Applications

Overview

Providing untrusted applications with shared and safe access to modern display hardware is of increasing importance. The new display system, called Blink, safely multiplexes complex graphical content from multiple untrusted Virtual Machines onto a single Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Blink does not allow clients to program the GPU directly, but instead provides a virtual processor abstraction which they can program. Blink executes virtual processor programs and controls the GPU on behalf of the client, in a manner that reduces processing and context switching overheads. Blink provides its own stored procedure abstraction for efficient hardware access, but also supports fast emulation of legacy OpenGL programs. To achieve performance and safety, Blink employs just-in-time compilation and simple program inspection.