System And Method for Efficient Paravirtualized OS Process Switching

A system, comprising:

• a shared cache memory;
• a plurality of virtual environments each of the virtual environments assigned one of a plurality of address space identifiers (“ASIDs”) stored in the shared cache memory;
• and
• a hypervisor creating a plurality of new processes for each of the plurality of virtual environments, performing a process switch to one of the virtual environments thereby designating the one of the virtual environments as the active virtual environment, determining whether the active virtual environment has exhausted each of the ASIDs, and flushing a cache memory when it is determined that the active virtual environment has exhausted each of the ASIDs.

A method, comprising:

• creating, by a hardware hypervisor, a plurality of new processes for each of a plurality of virtual environments, each of the virtual environments assigned one of a plurality of address space identifiers (“ASIDs”) stored in a cache memory;
• performing, by the hardware hypervisor, a process switch to one of the virtual environments thereby designating the one of the virtual environments as the active virtual environment;
• determining, by the hardware hypervisor, whether the active virtual environment has exhausted each of the ASIDs;
• and
• flushing, by the hardware hypervisor, a cache memory when it is determined that the active virtual environment has exhausted each of the ASIDs.