Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Add VirtIO Frame Buffer Support

Vincent Hanquez
2009-11-03T09:40:58Z

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 07:39:34AM +0100, Alexander Graf wrote:
>
> On 03.11.2009, at 07:34, Avi Kivity wrote:
>
>> On 11/03/2009 08:27 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:
>>>
>>>> How does it work today?
>>>
>>> You boot into a TERM=dumb line based emulation on 3270 (worst thing
>>> haunting people's nightmares ever), trying to get out of that mode
>>> as quickly as possible and off into SSH / VNC.
>>
>> Despite the coolness factor, IMO a few minutes during install time do
>> not justify a new hardware model and a new driver.
>
> It's more than just coolness factor. There are use cases out there
> (www.susestudio.com) that don't want to rely on the guest exporting a VNC
> server to the outside just to access graphics. You also want to see boot
> messages, have a console login screen, be able to debug things without
> switching between virtio-console and vnc, etc. etc.
>
> The hardware model isn't exactly new either. It's just the next logical
> step to a full PV machine using virtio. If the virtio-fb stuff turns out
> to be really fast and reliable, I could even imagine it being the default
> target for kvm on ppc as well, as we can't switch resolutions on the fly
> there atm.

not sure if i'm missing the point here, but couldn't it be hypothetically
extended to stuff 3d (or video & more 2d accel ?) commands too ? I can't
imagine the cirrus or stdvga driver be able to do that ever ;)

--
Vincent