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Subject: Re: hardwired VMI crap
From: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reply-To: tglx@linutronix.de
To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>,
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Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 01:04:50 +0100
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On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 15:39 -0800, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >  - /One/ _intelligent_ higher-level virtualization API/ABI. Xen's API is 
> >    quite advanced on this front.
> 
> At last!  Some love!
> 
> The Xen approach has always been to prefer high-level interfaces over
> lower-level ones, so that guests can meaningfully participate in their
> own virtualization.  There are some necessarily low-level things, but
> conceptually simple things like "create a new vcpu" should have simple
> interfaces.  There's no point in going to the effort of emulating a
> whole pile of real hardware if Xen can present an interface which is a
> close match to an existing high-level interface within the operating system.

Once you are there, you are near the point where you created a virtual
architecture, which could run on any real architecture which gets
supported by a hypervisor backend.

I'd love that :)

I know it is tricky to combine this with the upcoming hardware
virtualization support. But it's at least a worthwhile thought
experiment.

	tglx