From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: A set of "standard" virtual devices? Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:03:15 -0700 Message-ID: <4612B303.5000109@zytor.com> References: <4611652F.700@zytor.com> <200704031951.00544.arnd@arndb.de> <4612A5F0.2080609@goop.org> <200704032142.51976.arnd@arndb.de> <4612B123.2040105@goop.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4612B123.2040105@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 , Arnd Bergmann , Cornelia Huck , Linux Kernel Mailing List , mathiasen@gmail.com, virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org List-Id: virtualization@lists.linuxfoundation.org Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote: > = > Yes, and that's the core of the Xen netfront. But is there really much > code which can be shared between different hypervisors? When you get > down to it, all the real code is hypervisor-specific stuff for setting > up ringbuffers and dealing with interrupts. Like all the other network > drivers. > = One thing, Jeremy, which I think is being a bit misleading here: you're = focusing on big, performance-critical stuff. Those things are going to = be the ones which has the most win to implement in hypervisor-specific = ways. Although we can offer models for some hypervisors (and G-d knows = there are enough implementations out there of virtual disk which are = almost identical), they're clearly not going to be universal. However, there are other things; console is some, or my original = example, which was random number generation. For those, the benefit of = unification is proportionally greater, simply because the win of = anything hypervisor-specific is much smaller. -hpa