From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andi Kleen Subject: Re: A set of "standard" virtual devices? Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 23:36:42 +0200 Message-ID: <200704022336.43136.ak@suse.de> References: <4611652F.700@zytor.com> <200704022312.39195.ak@suse.de> <4611768D.1080801@garzik.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4611768D.1080801@garzik.org> Content-Disposition: inline List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: virtualization-bounces@lists.linux-foundation.org Errors-To: virtualization-bounces@lists.linux-foundation.org To: Jeff Garzik Cc: Virtualization Mailing List , "H. Peter Anvin" , Linux Kernel Mailing List , mathiasen@gmail.com, virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org List-Id: virtualization@lists.linuxfoundation.org On Monday 02 April 2007 23:33:01 Jeff Garzik wrote: > Andi Kleen wrote: > >> How would that work in the case where virtualized guests don't have a > >> visible PCI bus, and the virtual environment doesn't pretend to emulate > >> a PCI bus? > > = > > If they emulated one with the appropiate device = > > then distribution driver auto probing would just work transparently for= them. > = > Yes, but, ideally with paravirtualization you should be able to avoid = > the overhead of emulating many major classes of device (storage, = > network, RNG, etc.) by developing a low-overhead passthrough interface = > that does not involve PCI at all. The implementation wouldn't need to use PCI at all. There wouldn't = even need to be PCI like registers internally. Just a pci device with an ID somewhere in sysfs. PCI with unique IDs is just a convenient and well established key into the driver module collection. Once you have the right driver it can do what it wants. -Andi =