RE: [virtio-comment] RE: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for QingTian Box devices

["Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)" <longpeng2@huawei.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael S. Tsirkin [mailto:mst@redhat.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 4, 2022 1:15 AM
> To: Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)
> <longpeng2@huawei.com>
> Cc: Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>; Gonglei (Arei)
> <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>; virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [virtio-comment] RE: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for
> QingTian Box devices
> 
> On Mon, Jan 03, 2022 at 11:55:09AM +0000, Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure
> Service Product Dept.) wrote:
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Cornelia Huck [mailto:cohuck@redhat.com]
> > > Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 7:30 PM
> > > To: Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)
> > > <longpeng2@huawei.com>; Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
> > > Cc: Gonglei (Arei) <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>;
> > > virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
> > > Subject: Re: [virtio-comment] RE: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device
> ID for
> > > QingTian Box devices
> > >
> > > On Mon, Dec 27 2021, "Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product
> > > Dept.)"	<longpeng2@huawei.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >> -----Original Message-----
> > > >> From: Michael S. Tsirkin [mailto:mst@redhat.com]
> > > >> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2021 4:15 PM
> > > >> To: Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)
> > > >> <longpeng2@huawei.com>
> > > >> Cc: Gonglei (Arei) <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>;
> > > >> virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
> > > >> Subject: Re: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for QingTian Box
> devices
> > > >>
> > > >> On Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 02:49:25PM +0000, Longpeng (Mike, Cloud
> Infrastructure
> > > >> Service Product Dept.) wrote:
> > > >> > Hi Michael,
> > > >> >
> > > >> > Is there anything else I need to do to reserve the device id?
> > > >>
> > > >> OK, I see the issue was created. I think it makes sense to wait
> > > >> until Jan 3 with the vote since lots of people are on
> > > >> vacation.
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > Ok, thanks.
> > > >
> > > >> Meanwhile - are there plans to add this device to the spec eventually?
> > > >> Can you share a bit more of what it does?
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > We want to carve out some resources (e.g. vcpu, mem, pci_dev) from the
> user's
> > > > VM and then use these resources to start a sandbox for the user. The usage
> > > > quite likes the software enclave which Nitro already supported, but we
> have
> > > > much wider usage, for example, running unikernel + app (e.g. OSV + Redis)
> in
> > > > the sandbox, it would provide much better performance than the traditional
> > > > os.
> > >
> > > Sounds interesting. One question: Should this virtio device only support
> > > a specific hypervisor, or could it support various hypervisors in
> > > theory? (Via different commands or parameters.) In case of the latter,
> > > it might be better to reserve an ID for a "sandbox device" or so. If the
> > > design is too closely tied to your hypervisor, I'd be fine with
> > > reserving the ID as proposed.
> >
> > We want to name the device as "virtio sandbox" originally, but consider that
> it
> > would be much convenient to add new features (maybe tied to our hypervisor)
> in
> > the future if we introduce a private device, so we decide to use "QingTian
> Box"
> > at last.
> >
> > However, the sandbox function is not bound to a specific hypervisor, so it's
> free
> > for the other guys to add something like "virtio sandbox".
> 
> Hard to say of course but I'm guessing it's better to give it a generic

If the device only support the sandbox function, then I think a generic
name (e.g. virtio-sandbox) would be fine. But as I said above, we want to
extend it as a "toolbox" in the near future, not only the sandbox.

> name. Part of the appeal of virtio is it's hypervisor agnostic,
> hypervisor specific extensions can always be moved to a separate device.
> 

Yes, but we've already introduced a hypervisor specific device (NSM) now,
why it's hard to reserve just one ID for other vendors? So I really hope
the TC could give a chance for other vendors to do this, maybe you can
limit the IDs that a vendor can reserved. 

Thanks.

> --
> MST