Re: [ANNOUNCE] KVM Microconference at LPC 2023

[Mickaël Salaün <mic@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

What is the status of this microconference proposal? We'd be happy to 
talk about Heki [1] and potentially other hypervisor supports.
Regards,
 Mickaël


[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230505152046.6575-1-mic@xxxxxxxxxxx/


On 26/05/2023 18:09, Mickaël Salaün wrote:
> See James Morris's proposal here:
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/17f62cb1-a5de-2020-2041-359b8e96b8c0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
>
> On 26/05/2023 04:36, James Morris wrote:
>   > [Side topic]
>   >
>   > Would folks be interested in a Linux Plumbers Conference MC on this
>   > topic generally, across different hypervisors, VMMs, and architectures?
>   >
>   > If so, please let me know who the key folk would be and we can try
> writing
>   > up an MC proposal.
>
> The fine-grain memory management proposal from James Gowans looks
> interesting, especially the "side-car" virtual machines:
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/88db2d9cb42e471692ff1feb0b9ca855906a9d95.camel@xxxxxxxxxx/
>
>
> On 09/05/2023 11:55, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > We are planning on submitting a CFP to host a KVM Microconference at
> > Linux Plumbers Conference 2023. To help justify the proposal, we would
> > like to gather a list of folks that would likely attend, and crowdsource
> > a list of topics to include in the proposal.
> >
> > For both this year and future years, the intent is that a KVM
> > Microconference will complement KVM Forum, *NOT* supplant it. As you
> > probably noticed, KVM Forum is going through a somewhat radical change in
> > how it's organized; the conference is now free and (with some help from
> > Red Hat) organized directly by the KVM and QEMU communities. Despite the
> > unexpected changes and some teething pains, community response to KVM
> > Forum continues to be overwhelmingly positive! KVM Forum will remain
> > the venue of choice for KVM/userspace collaboration, for educational
> > content covering both KVM and userspace, and to discuss new features in
> > QEMU and other userspace projects.
> >
> > At least on the x86 side, however, the success of KVM Forum led us
> > virtualization folks to operate in relative isolation. KVM depends on
> > and impacts multiple subsystems (MM, scheduler, perf) in profound ways,
> > and recently we’ve seen more and more ideas/features that require
> > non-trivial changes outside KVM and buy-in from stakeholders that
> > (typically) do not attend KVM Forum. Linux Plumbers Conference is a
> > natural place to establish such collaboration within the kernel.
> >
> > Therefore, the aim of the KVM Microconference will be:
> > * to provide a setting in which to discuss KVM and kernel internals
> > * to increase collaboration and reduce friction with other subsystems
> > * to discuss system virtualization issues that require coordination with
> > other subsystems (such as VFIO, or guest support in arch/)
> >
> > Below is a rough draft of the planned CFP submission.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Paolo Bonzini (KVM Maintainer)
> > Sean Christopherson (KVM x86 Co-Maintainer)
> > Marc Zyngier (KVM ARM Co-Maintainer)
> >
> >
> > ===================
> > KVM Microconference
> > ===================
> >
> > KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) enables the use of hardware features
> > to improve the efficiency, performance, and security of virtual machines
> > created and managed by userspace.  KVM was originally developed to host
> > and accelerate "full" virtual machines running a traditional kernel and
> > operating system, but has long since expanded to cover a wide array of use
> > cases, e.g. hosting real time workloads, sandboxing untrusted workloads,
> > deprivileging third party code, reducing the trusted computed base of
> > security sensitive workloads, etc.  As KVM's use cases have grown, so too
> > have the requirements placed on KVM and the interactions between it and
> > other kernel subsystems.
> >
> > The KVM Microconference will focus on how to evolve KVM and adjacent
> > subsystems in order to satisfy new and upcoming requirements: serving
> > guest memory that cannot be accessed by host userspace[1], providing
> > accurate, feature-rich PMU/perf virtualization in cloud VMs[2], etc.
> >
> >
> > Potential Topics:
> >      - Serving inaccessible/unmappable memory for KVM guests (protected VMs)
> >      - Optimizing mmu_notifiers, e.g. reducing TLB flushes and spurious zapping
> >      - Supporting multiple KVM modules (for non-disruptive upgrades)
> >      - Improving and hardening KVM+perf interactions
> >      - Implementing arch-agnostic abstractions in KVM (e.g. MMU)
> >      - Defining KVM requirements for hardware vendors
> >      - Utilizing "fault" injection to increase test coverage of edge cases
> >      - KVM vs VFIO (e.g. memory types, a rather hot topic on the ARM side)
> >
> >
> > Key Attendees:
> >      - Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> (KVM Maintainer)
> >      - Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>  (KVM x86 Co-Maintainer)
> >      - Your name could be here!
> >
> > [1] 
> > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20221202061347.1070246-1-chao.p.peng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [2] 
> > https://lore.kernel.org/all/CALMp9eRBOmwz=mspp0m5Q093K3rMUeAsF3vEL39MGV5Br9wEQQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx