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[Xen-devel] Re: A proposal - binary

To: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [Xen-devel] Re: A proposal - binary
From: Zachary Amsden <zach@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:39:29 -0700
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxx>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Jack Lo <jlo@xxxxxxxxxx>, Greg KH <greg@xxxxxxxxx>, Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chris Wright <chrisw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxx>, James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxx, pazke@xxxxxxxxx
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Andi Kleen wrote:
In the Xen case, they may want to run a dom-0 hypervisor which is compiled for an actual hardware sub-arch, such as Summit or ES7000.

There is no reason Summit or es7000 or any other subarchitecture would need to do different virtualization. In fact these subarchitectures are pretty much obsolete by the generic subarchitecture and could be fully
done by runtime switching.

For privileged domains that have hardware privileges and need to send IPIs or something it might make sense. Othewsie, there is no issue.

I would expect to see these new sub-architectures begin to grow like a rash.

I hope not. The i386 subarchitecture setup is pretty bad already
and mostly obsolete for modern systems.

Yes, I hope not too.

I'm now talking lightyears into the future

tststs - please watch your units.

I realized after I wrote it ;)

I don't fully agree to move everything into paravirt ops. IMHO
it should be only done for stuff which is performance critical
or cannot be virtualized.

Yes, this is all just a crazy idea, not an actual proposal.

And it's unlikely PCI will be ever a good fit for a Quantum computer @)

Hmm, a quantum bus would only allow one reader of each quantum bit. So you couldn't broadcast without daisy chaining everything. Could be an issue.

Maybe someday Xen and VMware can share the same ABI interface and both use a VMI like layer.

The problem with VMI is that while it allows hypervisor side evolution
it doesn't really allow Linux side evolution with its fixed spec.

It doesn't stop Linux from using the provided primitives in any way is sees fit. So it doesn't top evolution in that sense. What it does stop is having the Linux hypervisor interface grow antlers and have new hooves grafted onto it. What it sorely needed in the interface is a way to probe and detect optional features that allow it to grow independent of one particular hypervisor vendor.

Zach

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