Re: [Xen-devel] [v5][PATCH 0/5] xen: add Intel IGD passthrough support

[Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2014, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 01:33:09PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > Il 01/07/2014 19:39, Ross Philipson ha scritto:
> > >
> > >We do IGD pass-through in our project (XenClient). The patches
> > >originally came from our project. We surface the same ISA bridge and
> > >have never had activation issues on any version of Widows from XP to
> > >Win8. We do not normally run server platforms so I can't say for sure
> > >there.
> > 
> > The problem is not activation, the problem is that the patches are making
> > assumptions on the driver and the firmware that might work today but are
> > IMHO just not sane.
> > 
> > I would have no problem with a clean patchset that adds a new machine type
> > and doesn't touch code in "-M pc", but it looks like mst disagrees.
> > Ultimately, if a patchset is too hacky for upstream, you can include it in
> > your downstream XenClient (and XenServer) QEMU branch.  It happens.
> 
> And then this discussion will come back again in a year when folks
> rebase and ask: Why hasn't this been done upstream.
> 
> Then the discussion resumes ..
> 
> With this long thread I lost a bit context about the challenges
> that exists. But let me try summarizing it here - which will hopefully
> get some consensus.
> 
> 1). Fix IGD hardware to not use Southbridge magic addresses.
>     We can moan and moan but I doubt it is going to change.
> 
> 2). Since we need the Southbridge magic addresses, we can expose
>     an bridge. [I think everybody agrees that we need to do
>     that since 1) is no go).
> 
> 3). What kind of bridge. We can do:
> 
>      a) Two bridges - one 'passthrough' and the legacy ISA bridge
>         that QEMU emulates. Both Linux and Windows are OK with
>         two bridges (even thought it is pretty weird).
> 
>      b) One bridge - the one that QEMU emulates - and lets emulate
>         more of the registers (by emulate - I mean for some get the
>         data from the real hardware).
> 
>            b1). We can't use the legacy because the registers are
>                 above 256 (is that correct? Did I miss something?)
> 
>            b2)  We would need to use the Q35.
>                 b2a). If we need Q35, that needs to be exposed in
>                       for Xen guests. That means exposing the 
>                       MMCONFIG and restructing the E820 to fit that
>                       in.
>                       Problem:
>                         - Migration is not working with Q35.
>                           (But for v1 you wouldn't migrate, however
>                            later hardware will surely have SR-IOV so
>                            we will need to migrate).
> 
>                         - There are no developers who have an OK
>                           from their management to focus on this.
>                            (Potential solution: Poke Intel management to see
>                             if they can get more developers on it)

- need to test compatibility with current Xen VM images


> 
> 4). Code does a bit of sysfs that could use some refacturing with
>     the KVM code.
>     Problem: More time needed to do the code restructing.
> 
> 
> Is that about correct?
> 
> What are folks timezones and the best days next week to talk about
> this on either Google Hangout or the phone?

UK timezone. Maybe Friday afternoon so that afterwards we can go have
enough beers to forget about all this.

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