Architectural Variants

The main scope of the Ghaf platform is edge virtualization. However, to support modular development and testing of the platform, variants are supported with the following definitions:

• Default
  A default variant. Supports minimal host, GUI VM¹ and netvm. May host other VMs. For more information, see Stack.

• Headless
  A variant with minimal host and netvm. May host other VMs but does not have a GUI VM or graphics stack on a host.

• Host only A variant with minimal host only. A user can manually install software to a host, including VMs (if supported by hardware).

• No virtualization A variant for hardware with no support for virtualization. May run any software, similar to popular Linux distributions, but cannot support guest virtual machines. May host any software deployed directly on a host.

Variant Name	Headless	Graphics	VMs	Devices
Default	No	GUI VM	Supported	Jetson, generic x86
Headless	Yes	No	Supported	Jetson, generic x86
Host Only	Yes	No	May be supported but not included	Jetson, generic x86
No Virtualization	Yes or no	Native on host	Not supported	Raspberry Pi, RISC-V

Footnotes

1. As of early 2023, the graphics stack is deployed on a host to support application development. Work is ongoing to define the GUI VM and isolate graphics with GPU passthrough. ↩