From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: A set of "standard" virtual devices? Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:10:58 -0700 Message-ID: <46117F72.6020506@zytor.com> References: <4611652F.700@zytor.com> <200704022312.39195.ak@suse.de> <4611768D.1080801@garzik.org> <200704022336.43136.ak@suse.de> <461178D9.402@goop.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: <461178D9.402@goop.org> 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: Jeremy Fitzhardinge Cc: Virtualization Mailing List , Jeff Garzik , virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List , mathiasen@gmail.com List-Id: virtualization@lists.linuxfoundation.org Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote: > Andi Kleen wrote: >> 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. > = > But I understood hpa's suggestion to mean that there would be a standard > PCI interface for a hardware RNG, and a single linux driver for that > device, which all hypervisors would be expected to implement. But > that's only reasonable if the virtualization environment has some notion > of PCI to expose to the Linux guest. > = That is, of course, true, although "some notion of" is very broad, and = one could also use this for detection and some hypervisor-specific = communication for the actual I/O. However, one probably wants to think about what the heck one actually = means with "virtualization" in the absence of a lot of this stuff. PCI = is probably the closest thing we have to a lowest common denominator for = device detection. -hpa