Xen project Mailing List

Re: [Xen-users] A few questions

To: "Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx>

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:17:56 -0500

Delivery-date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:18:40 -0700

Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; b=CJq0ng1OBN4yVxoiGDnggHxTrs8cniN7xn/XKnSVssn227cBqXYYENMhhHJZFoVS7KFYPpLuB5Ets/zQOLSBn6BbV6PdmOM/MBrAh/7oMNcG/ZD12U2e1j3p68i2lBJTPPmU3uzKyhGuSdNmnDRBow9ou7KVhOAadHVFmM9upi0=

List-id: Xen user discussion <xen-users.lists.xensource.com>

Currently, Xen doesn't support any direct hardware access from fully virtualized domains [aka HVM domain => AMD-V (SVM, Pacificia) or VMX (Intel VT, Vanderpool, etct)].

If there was support for IOMMU in Xen (and in hardware), and the relevant software architecture to support it is present, then in theory you could pass the entire hardware component to the HVM domain. This means the netire nVidia/ATI/3DLabs/S3/etc graphics card, not a window thereof. To get a window, you need some software to manage it, and it would be easiest to implement that as a paravirtual driver that sends drawing commands to the owner of the actual hardware (Dom0 usually).

Migration of fully virtualized domains is also not yet supported. Only way to do that is a full shutdown and startup in the new location. There is work in progress for this, initially to save/restore the domain, which is "slow migration [but faster than shutdown+start]".

Ok, so having a pacifica CPU doesn't magically give me everything that running a cooperative linux guest kernel gives me. That makes sense. Thanks!

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