Title: On the future of research VMs: a hardware/software perspective
Abstract: In the recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of the usages of Virtual Machines (VMs) which are currently found in desktops, smartphones, and cloud deployments. These recent developments create new research opportunities in the VM domain extending from performance to energy efficiency, and scalability studies. Research into these directions necessitates research frameworks for VMs that provide full coverage of the execution domains and hardware platforms. Unfortunately, the state of the art on Research VMs does not live up to such expectations and lacks behind industrial-strength software, making it hard for the research community to provide valuable insights.