Re: KVM on MIPS?

[Hollis Blanchard <hollis_blanchard@mentor.com>]

On 03/26/2010 12:59 PM, Dale Farnsworth wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 09:16:19AM -0700, Dale Farnsworth wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:32:57PM +0100, Alexander Graf wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 25.03.2010 um 22:04 schrieb Avi Kivity<avi@redhat.com>:
>>>
>>>> On 03/25/2010 06:54 PM, Dale Farnsworth wrote:
>>>>> I'm beginning to look at implementing KVM on MIPS.  I've tried to
>>>>> search
>>>>> for any work-in-progress on this but haven't found much at all.
>>>>
>>>>> If you know of anyone who is working on this or of pitfalls I should
>>>>> consider before jumping in, please let me know.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is the instruction set virtualizable?
>>>
>>> FWIW it's not. Kernel mode is used based on an address offset of the IP.
>>> Since you'd want to have your guest running in user mode, you're pretty
>>> much lost there.
>>
>> I guess that would qualify as a pitfall.  Thanks Avi and Alex.
>
> After thinking about this some more, I think this means we can't run
> an unmodified guest.  It should be possible to build the guest kernel
> to run in supervisor or user mode/address space.
>
> I'm new to MIPS, so I'm still looking for other challenges in virtualizing
> the instruction set.

Hi Dale, how is this going?

Hollis Blanchard
Mentor Graphics, Embedded Systems Division