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

Anthony Liguori
2009-11-04T16:35:41Z

Vincent Hanquez wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 11:38:18AM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>
>> On 11/03/2009 01:25 PM, Vincent Hanquez wrote:
>>
>>> 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 ;)
>>>
>>>
>> cirrus has pretty good 2d acceleration. 3D is a mega-project though.
>>
>
> absolutely huge indeed, but still alexander's code is pretty much the
> only way, to start such a project. with maybe added benefits on more
> and easier 2d acceleration.
>
> or otherwise wait for SR-IOV graphics cards (or similar tech)...
>

I think the real question is do we paravirtualize a VGA device or a
framebuffer.

Obviously, the advantage of doing a framebuffer is that it works for s390.

A VGA device has better backwards compatibility on PCs although it's
obviously more complex. In an ideal world, we could expose the virtio
framebuffer device as part of PCI device that was also VGA capable
(virtio-pci-vga transport?).

But then there's QXL on the horizon which complicates matters further.

I'd say that virtio-fb should just focus on the s390 use case for now.
Let things evolve as needed.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori