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SIGOPS
2008

virtio: towards a de-facto standard for virtual I/O devices

13 years 12 months ago
virtio: towards a de-facto standard for virtual I/O devices
The Linux Kernel currently supports at least 8 distinct virtualization systems: Xen, KVM, VMware's VMI, IBM's System p, IBM's System z, User Mode Linux, lguest and IBM's legacy iSeries. It seems likely that more such systems will appear, and until recently each of these had its own block, network, console and other drivers with varying features and optimizations. The attempt to address this is virtio: a series of efficient, well-maintained Linux drivers which can be adapted for various different hypervisor implementations using a shim layer. This includes a simple extensible feature mechanism for each driver. We also provide an obvious ring buffer transport implementation called vring, which is currently used by KVM and lguest. This has the subtle effect of providing a path of least resistance for any new hypervisors: supporting this efficient transport mechanism will immediately reduce the amount of work which needs to be done. Finally, we provide an implementatio...
Rusty Russell
Added 15 Dec 2010
Updated 15 Dec 2010
Type Journal
Year 2008
Where SIGOPS
Authors Rusty Russell
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