Interview: Wilfred Yu, Open Source Virtualization Engineering Manager

By Dawn M. Foster (91 posts) on October 14, 2009 at 8:00 am

Wilfred Yu is an engineering manager in the Intel Open Source Technology Center in Santa Clara, California. He joined Intel in 1983 and had been involved in a series of operating system projects for Intel® processors. He currently manages the team that is adding Intel Virtualization Technology to Open source VMMs. He received his Bachelors degree in Engineering from McGill University and his Masters of Applied Science and PhD degrees from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center (OTC)?

Wilfred: We have a great mission here and a great team of people to make it happen. People are not shy about questioning the status quo. We get to work on challenging problems and we get to do these with the best and brightest inside Intel and in the community. If you're into bleeding edge stuff, OTC is the place.

Dawn: Can you tell us more about the work that Intel is doing for open source virtualization?

Wilfred: We have been working for the past five years to add Intel virtualization technologies (VT) to open source virtual machine monitors (VMM) projects. Xen was our initial target, but we have extended our involvement over time to include KVM. Initially, Xen could only boot para-virtualized Linux guest. We added code to enable Xen to use Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) to boot unmodified guest OSes, like Windows. We worked with the Xen maintainer to extend Xen to 64-bit. We added support for Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed-IO (VT-d) so you can assign PCI devices to guest OS's. We also added support for Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) so you can authenticate the VMM you are booting on a platform. We are now pushing virtualization changes for power management, IO virtualization and RAS.

Dawn: How important are open source virtualization projects, like Xen and KVM, to cloud computing solutions?

Wilfred: Very. Some of the most prominent cloud solutions out there are built on open source VMMs. The cost factor is an important determinant. And the fact that you can get full sources to the VMM means that you can make changes to meet your cloud needs. I truly believe that open source virtualization is powering the cloud.

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't working on virtualization technologies?

Wilfred: What's more fun than work? Seriously. I have kids that are approaching college age. I spend time with them when I'm not doing Intel work.

Categories: Manageability & Security, Open Source
Tags: , , , , , ,

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (0)

Trackbacks (6)


Leave a comment  

To obtain technical support, please go to Software Support.
Name (required)*

Email (required; will not be displayed on this page)*

Your URL (optional)


Comment*