[Xen-devel] Re: Re-using the x86_emulate_memop() to perform MMIO for HVM.

[Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3 May 2006, at 15:50, Petersson, Mats wrote:

> A third, easier, but less pleasing way to solve it would be retain the
> current two decode/emulate code-paths, and just add everythign twice
> when new scenarios are needed to be decoded - I don't quite like this
> idea, but it certainly is the least amount of effort to implement!
>
> Thoughts and comments (aside from the obvious "You should have thought
> about this earlier!" ;-) would be welcome...
We need an emulator both in Xen and in the device model. The current 
split decode-emulate is pretty barking. My plan for now would be to 
copy x86_emulate.c and plumb it into qemu-dm: so we do duplicate the 
code but it's actually only one source file to maintain.
So, Xen would take the page fault and look up the corresponding mmio 
area. If it's an area corresponding to a device emulated by qemu-dm 
then Xen hands off the entire problem. It does not bother to decode the 
instruction at all. Instead it stuffs register state into the shared 
memory area and hands off to qemu-dm in dom0.
There are plans afoot to try using the full qemu cpu emulator. Done 
well, that would provide fuller and faster emulation, but there is a 
bigger up-front cost to getting that plumbed in correctly and even if 
someone runs with this plan I don't see it being completed to a high 
degree of robustness in the very near future.
 -- Keir


_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel