From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Gregory Haskins Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] AlacrityVM guest drivers for 2.6.33 Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:34:44 -0500 Message-ID: <4B3254B4.2080602@gmail.com> References: <4B1D4F29.8020309@gmail.com> <20091218215107.GA14946@elte.hu> <4B2F9582.5000002@gmail.com> <20091222075742.GB26467@elte.hu> <4B3103B4.4070708@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enig8D89DAD9F03F2957BA21E5D8" Cc: Ingo Molnar , Avi Kivity , kvm@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , torvalds@linux-foundation.org, "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , netdev@vger.kernel.org, "alacrityvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net" , "Ira W. Snyder" To: Kyle Moffett Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig8D89DAD9F03F2957BA21E5D8 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 12/23/09 1:15 AM, Kyle Moffett wrote: > On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 12:36, Gregory Haskins > wrote: >> On 12/22/09 2:57 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote: >>> * Gregory Haskins wrote: >>>> Actually, these patches have nothing to do with the KVM folks. [...]= >>> >>> That claim is curious to me - the AlacrityVM host >> >> It's quite simple, really. These drivers support accessing vbus, and >> vbus is hypervisor agnostic. In fact, vbus isn't necessarily even >> hypervisor related. It may be used anywhere where a Linux kernel is t= he >> "io backend", which includes hypervisors like AlacrityVM, but also >> userspace apps, and interconnected physical systems as well. >> >> The vbus-core on the backend, and the drivers on the frontend operate >> completely independent of the underlying hypervisor. A glue piece >> called a "connector" ties them together, and any "hypervisor" specific= >> details are encapsulated in the connector module. In this case, the >> connector surfaces to the guest side as a pci-bridge, so even that is >> not hypervisor specific per se. It will work with any pci-bridge that= >> exposes a compatible ABI, which conceivably could be actual hardware. >=20 > This is actually something that is of particular interest to me. I > have a few prototype boards right now with programmable PCI-E > host/device links on them; one of my long-term plans is to finagle > vbus into providing multiple "virtual" devices across that single > PCI-E interface. >=20 > Specifically, I want to be able to provide virtual NIC(s), serial > ports and serial consoles, virtual block storage, and possibly other > kinds of interfaces. My big problem with existing virtio right now > (although I would be happy to be proven wrong) is that it seems to > need some sort of out-of-band communication channel for setting up > devices, not to mention it seems to need one PCI device per virtual > device. >=20 > So I would love to be able to port something like vbus to my nify PCI > hardware and write some backend drivers... then my PCI-E connected > systems would dynamically provide a list of highly-efficient "virtual" > devices to each other, with only one 4-lane PCI-E bus. Hi Kyle, We indeed have others that are doing something similar. I have CC'd Ira who may be able to provide you more details. I would also point you at the canonical example for what you would need to write to tie your systems together. Its the "null connector", which you can find here: http://git.kernel.org/?p=3Dlinux/kernel/git/ghaskins/alacrityvm/linux-2.6= =2Egit;a=3Dblob;f=3Dkernel/vbus/connectors/null.c;h=3Db6d16cb68b7e49e0752= 8278bc9f5b73e1dac0c2f;hb=3DHEAD Do not hesitate to ask any questions, though you may want to take the conversation to the alacrityvm-devel list as to not annoy the current CC list any further than I already have ;) Kind Regards, -Greg --------------enig8D89DAD9F03F2957BA21E5D8 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.11 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksyVLQACgkQP5K2CMvXmqGUDgCfZxDJeTqKiX3y9Fpz3RURVy1v YrcAnRdSSj3nnbmYYnC/PH4jk67Gl4GL =XpWp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enig8D89DAD9F03F2957BA21E5D8--