Re: [Xen-devel] 1 GPU multiple VMs

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 08:22:33PM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 08:18:47PM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 06:11:56PM +0000, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> > > On Wed, 8 Feb 2012, Pasi KÃ?Â?rkkÃ?Â?inen wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 05:20:31PM +0000, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 3 Feb 2012, Jacobs Jordi wrote:
> > > > > > Hi,
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > I am wondering how GPU sharing could/should be implemented for the 
> > > > > > Xen Hypervisor.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > I have come across several papers that explain many possibilities 
> > > > > > on GPU sharing for multiple VMs but I'm not sure wich
> > > > > > one would be the best solution for Xen.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > API remoting (gallium3D) (ex. Xen3D project)
> > > > > > Mediated passthrough (Multiplexing the GPU while maintaining the 
> > > > > > different contexts.)
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Can you guys give me your idea on the matter?
> > > > > > Please also mention any existing projects you know that are related 
> > > > > > to this problem.
> > > > > 
> > > > > My personal opinion is that the simplest thing to do is OpenGL
> > > > > remoting. Gallium remoting could also be OK but considering that many
> > > > > cards don't have Gallium drivers we would probably end up doing two
> > > > > conversions instead of one (DirectX->Gallium in the guest,
> > > > > Gallium->OpenGL in dom0).
> > > > > Mediated passthrough is very card specific so I am afraid you would 
> > > > > end
> > > > > up writing virtualization specific drivers for all the cards you want 
> > > > > to
> > > > > support. Not to mention that you might need to access some videocard
> > > > > interfaces that on Nvidia are not discosed.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I believe that virtualbox already supports OpenGL remoting in a decent
> > > > > way, so I would start from there, port what they have to Xen, and
> > > > > improve it.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I wonder if SPICE already supports OpenGL stuff..
> > > > I think it's at least supposed to be able to support OpenGL.
> > > > 
> > > > (http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/spice-devel/2011-November/006018.html)
> > >  
> > > Not yet, but I think that they are working on it. Still very early days
> > > though.
> > > Also it would only work with HVM guests, while having a proper xen
> > > frontend/backend OpenGL remoting driver pair would work for both.
> > 
> > Yep.
> > 
> > There's also: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmgl/
> > 
> > "OpenGL apps running inside a VM use VMGL to obtain graphics hardware 
> > acceleration. VMGL supports VMware, Xen PV and HVM, qemu, and KVM VMs; 
> > X11-based OS such as Linux, FreeBSD and OpenSolaris; and ATI, Nvidia and 
> > Intel GPUs. "
> > 
> 
> And Chromium might have something related aswell:
> http://chromium.sourceforge.net/doc/index.html
> 

And one more related interesting link:

"VMware's Virtual GPU Driver Is Running Fast":
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vmware_vmwgfx_g3d&num=1

So the Gallium3D virtual GPU/OpenGL stuff with VMware VMs seems to work pretty 
nicely these days!
That might be worth a look.. and to get it running with Xen.

I think SPICE is going to use Gallium3D aswell.

-- Pasi



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