By Mirko Zorz
Publication Date: 2026-06-10 05:30:00
BlueRock has issued the latest open-source release of its NOVA Microhypervisor with DMA remapping support for AMD platforms that have IOMMU hardware virtualization. The capability is enabled by default and extends hardware-level isolation across virtual machines, devices, and memory in shared execution environments.
Background on NOVA
NOVA combines microkernel and hypervisor functions in a small trusted computing base. It uses a capability-based authorization model and provides mechanisms for virtualization, spatial and temporal separation, scheduling, communication, and platform resource management. Multiple unmodified guest operating systems can run concurrently on machines with hardware virtualization features.
The codebase is written almost entirely in C++, with roughly 3.7% assembly, and supports ARMv8-A (aarch64) and x86_64 processors, including Intel VT-x with VMX and EPT, and AMD-V with SVM and NPT. The aarch64 builds target boards from Allwinner, Amlogic, Broadcom, HiSilicon, NVIDIA, NXP, Qualcomm, Renesas, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx.
New DMA protections on AMD
The AMD IOMMU integration is a core enforcement mechanism within the platform. NOVA can prevent hardware devices assigned to one virtual machine from accessing the memory of neighboring workloads, enforce memory access controls at per-device and per-memory-page granularity, abort unauthorized memory transactions through the IOMMU, and optionally record DMA remapping faults for…
