From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: A set of "standard" virtual devices? Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:50:25 -0700 Message-ID: <4613C941.6040706@zytor.com> References: <4611652F.700@zytor.com> <200704040049.13118.arnd@arndb.de> <4612F6E9.7040003@zytor.com> <200704041511.42543.arnd@arndb.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <200704041511.42543.arnd@arndb.de> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Virtualization Mailing List , Cornelia Huck , Linux Kernel Mailing List , mathiasen@gmail.com, virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org List-Id: virtualization@lists.linuxfoundation.org Arnd Bergmann wrote: > >> That being said, on platforms which are PCI-centric, such as x86, this >> of course makes it a lot easier to produce virtual devices which work >> across hypervisors, since the device model, of *any* operating system is >> set up to handle them. > > Yes, as I said there are two separate problems. I really think that > a standardized virtual driver interface should be modeled after > kernel <-> user interfaces, not hardware <-> kernel interfaces. > > Once we know what operations we want (e.g. read, write and SIGIO, > or some other set of primitives), it will be good to provide a > virtual PCI device that can be used as one transport mechanism > below it. Using PCI device IDs to tell what functionality is > provided by the device would provide a reasonable method for > autoprobing. > That seems like a reasonable approach. I *do* care about hardware-equivalent interfaces, because they, too, keep getting reinvented, but it seems reasonable to approach it in a layered fashion like you describe. -hpa