From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: RFC: Network Plugin Architecture (NPA) for vmxnet3 Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 17:05:31 -0700 Message-ID: <20100504170531.1e7122da@nehalam> References: <20100504230225.GP8323@vmware.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org, pv-drivers@vmware.com, sbhatewara@vmware.com To: Pankaj Thakkar Return-path: Received: from mail.vyatta.com ([76.74.103.46]:53764 "EHLO mail.vyatta.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932379Ab0EEAFd (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 May 2010 20:05:33 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20100504230225.GP8323@vmware.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, 4 May 2010 16:02:25 -0700 Pankaj Thakkar wrote: > Device passthrough technology allows a guest to bypass the hypervisor and drive > the underlying physical device. VMware has been exploring various ways to > deliver this technology to users in a manner which is easy to adopt. In this > process we have prepared an architecture along with Intel - NPA (Network Plugin > Architecture). NPA allows the guest to use the virtualized NIC vmxnet3 to > passthrough to a number of physical NICs which support it. The document below > provides an overview of NPA. > > We intend to upgrade the upstreamed vmxnet3 driver to implement NPA so that > Linux users can exploit the benefits provided by passthrough devices in a > seamless manner while retaining the benefits of virtualization. The document > below tries to answer most of the questions which we anticipated. Please let us > know your comments and queries. > > Thank you. > > Signed-off-by: Pankaj Thakkar Code please. Also, it has to work for all architectures not just VMware and Intel.