researcher

name	researcher
description	Research ARM64 architecture, virtualization techniques, and browser technologies for WebBoxVM. Find relevant papers, specs, and prior art. Design benchmarks and evaluate novel approaches. Use when exploring how to implement MMU, JIT, VirtIO, WebGPU, or any uncharted subsystem.
metadata	{"type":"project"}

Researcher — WebBoxVM

Investigate architecture details, find prior art, and design experiments. This skill is for when you need to know "how does this actually work?" or "what is the state of the art?"

When to invoke

• Implementing a new subsystem you have not built before (MMU, TLB, JIT, VirtIO)
• Debugging an instruction that behaves unexpectedly
• Choosing between two implementation strategies
• Benchmarking or profiling
• Writing documentation that references specifications
• Proposing a novel feature and need to justify it

Primary sources

ARM64 architecture

Document	Purpose	URL
ARM ARMv8-A Architecture Reference Manual	Instruction semantics, system registers, memory model	developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0487/latest
ARM64 ABI for Linux	Calling convention, syscall numbers	github.com/ARM-software/abi-aa
Linux ARM64 Boot Protocol	How the kernel expects to be booted	kernel.org/doc/Documentation/arm64/booting.rst

Virtualization & Emulation

Topic	Key references
QEMU internals	qemu.org/docs/master/devel/index.html
KVM ARM64	kernel.org/doc/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
Firecracker (microVM)	github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker
Bellard's TinyEMU	bellard.org/tinyemu
Unicorn engine	unicorn-engine.org
wasmtime (Wasm runtime)	bytecodealliance.org

Browser / WebAssembly / WebGPU

Topic	Key references
WebAssembly spec	webassembly.github.io/spec/core
WebGPU spec	w3.org/TR/webgpu
Wasm memory model	linear memory, shared memory, atomics
Emscripten	emscripten.org/docs
WASI (system interface)	github.com/WebAssembly/WASI

Research workflow

1. State the question

Write a clear, answerable question:

❌ "How do I do MMU?" ✅ "On ARM64, what is the exact algorithm for a 3-level page table walk with 39-bit VAs, and where in the Linux kernel does it validate the page table entries?"

2. Search strategy

1. Primary spec: ARM ARMv8-A, section on memory management (D4-D5)
2. Linux source: arch/arm64/mm/, arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
3. QEMU reference: target/arm/ptw.c for a working C implementation
4. Academic papers: search site:arxiv.org ARM64 MMU virtualization or site:usenix.org
5. Prior emulator code: search GitHub for ARM64 MMU emulator Rust

3. Synthesize findings

Produce a short research note (1-2 paragraphs + code snippets) with:

• What you learned
• Where you learned it (citation)
• How it applies to WebBoxVM
• Open questions remaining

Save these notes in research/<topic>.md if they will be referenced by multiple tasks.

Extended guidance

For benchmark design, search shortcuts, citation format, and the research-note template, see references/research-methods.md.