Re: can KVM do pci-mapping like xen?

[Muli Ben-Yehuda <muli-7z/5BgaJwgfQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 09:28:26PM +0100, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> One of the features of xen that I find really interesting is the
> ability to "map" pci slots straight to the guest OS.
> 
> I just recently got myself a VT-capable processor, so I started looking around.
> 
> Since my mainboard supports 2x PCI-Ex16, I bought 2 GFX-cards.
> I normally use 3 monitors using xinerama.
> 
> My idea/hope is that I can "map" one of my GFX-cards to the guest-os
> (windows), so there is no emulation on that. This way I can play
> some windows-games without rebooting.
> 
> Xen claims to support this.

Xen support this for "para-virtualized" guests, which means guests
kernels that have been modified to know they're running on
Xen. Specifically, giving direct access to a PCI device to a guest
requires a special "driver" running in the guest (pci-front, in Xen
parlance).

> Is there any chance KVM will do this too?

There's no inherent reason why not, but it doesn't at the
moment. Neither does Xen for fully-virtualized guests AFAIK.

Cheers,
Muli

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