Re: Tagging Xen 4.0.0 first release candidate

[Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@hp.com>]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 2:06 AM, Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@eu.citrix.com> wrote:
> On 05/01/2010 08:56, "Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@novell.com> wrote:
>
>> In any case I'm of the opinion that the tools limitations with the old
>> ioctl should be eliminated before 4.0 gets released - I had hoped
>> that someone with better knowledge of the tools than I have
>> would approach this, but since no-one showed up I'll try to.
>
> It's a bit late for 4.0.0 really. The lack of interest is probably the lack
> of people hitting the 43-bit limitation built into the current interface.
> Just about noone is anywhere near close to it.

Perhaps due to the lack of x86 processors supporting more than 40-bits
of physical address space that are currently on the market.  But we
know that's going to change fairly shortly and x86 will finally get
support for more than 1TB.  That opens the doors for hardware vendors
to create interesting configurations and maybe not worry so much about
compressing the address space into a contiguous block.  If Xen can't
support at least a 44-bit physical address space within the 4.x
lifetime, it could become a serious limiting factor.  It seems rather
shortsighted not to prepare for it now, especially given the
opportunity we have at a major version break.  Thanks,

Alex