[Xen-devel] Xen 4.5 development update (July update)

[konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx]

Below is a summary of the projects / features being worked on for the 4.5
time frame.  The tentative feature freeze is scheduled for September 10th,
which is two months away. This being the summer some folks are talking
vacation, so those two months might be a lot less.

The "prognosis" is now the likelihood of completion in the 4.5 timeframe.
A bunch of items had moved to the completed phase which is fantastic.

However we still have some that are important but the code hadn't yet
been posted which is worrisome. I've also moved some to Xen 4.6 after
talking with folks privately.

none - nothing yet
fair - still working on it, patches are prototypes or RFC
ok   - patches posted, acting on review
good - some last minute pieces
done - all done, might have bugs

For items involving code hosted on the Xen.org site (including qemu-xen),
that means a likelihood of having the feature code-complete and mostly
working by the feature freeze.  (It's OK if there are still bugs to be
worked out.)  For items in Linux, it would mean having items on track
to make it into the kernel released just after the scheduled 4.5 time frame.

In terms of libvirt it has monthly releases. As such not going to track
every release - but closer to when RCs are out.

= Timeline =

We are planning on a 9-month release cycle.  Based on that, below are
our estimated dates:

* Coding time: <=== NOW, two months left!

* Feature Freeze: 10th September 2014
* First RC: 10th October
* Release: 10th December 2014

The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and
will therefore be fairly unpredictable.  The feature freeze may be
slipped for especially important features which are near completion.

= Prognosis =

The states are: none -> fair -> ok -> good -> done

none - nothing yet
fair - still working on it, patches are prototypes or RFC
ok   - patches posted, acting on review
good - some last minute pieces
done - all done, might have bugs


= Open =

== ARM ==

*  ARM - Device assigment on ARM (good)
   RFC for the hypervisor side sent.
   Linux parts at risk.
  -  Julien Grall

*  ARM XEN_DOMCTL_memory_mapping hypercall for ARM (good)
   v9 posted; resent & rebased
  -  Arianna Avanzini

*  ARM Xen UEFI booting on ARM (ok)
   v2
  -  Roy Franz

*  ARM PSCI v0.2 (good)
   v3 posted
  -  Parth Dixit

*  ARM GICv3 support (ok)
   v6a patchset (refactor in, also known as v9a); v7 posted
   v9a posted which does GIC and VGIC code refactoring
  -  Vijay Kilari

*  ARM VM save/restore/live migration (ok)
  -  Junghyun Yoo

*  ARM remote processor iommu module (GPUs + IPUs) (unknown)
  -  Andrii Tseglytskyi

*  ARM: Use super pages in p2m (ok)
   v5 posted
  -  Ian Campbell

*  ARM - MiniOS (ok)
   v6 posted
  -  Thomas Leonard

*  ARM - VGIC emulation (ok)
   v8
  -  Stefano Stabellini

*  ARM - XENFEAT_grant_map_11 (fair)
   Provide kernels an grant->MFN lookup
   RFC
  -  Stefano Stabellini

== x86 ==

*  New Migration (v2). (ok)
   v6 posted
   libxl is next
   tmem & remus need work
  -  Andrew Cooper & David Vrabel

*  Remus using migration-v2 (fair)
   RFC posted - depends on v6 of 'New Migration'
  -  Yang Hongyang

*  PVH - AMD hardware support. (fair)
   Issues with FSBASE MSRs
  -  Mukesh Rathor

*  Xen multiboot2-EFI support (fair)
   Needed for SecureBoot
   Depends on Xen Boot info (rework multiboot and other structs)
   See http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2013-05/msg02281.html
  -  Daniel Kiper

*  Xen HPET interrupt fixes (fair)
   behind migration v2
  -  Andrew Cooper

*  HT enabled, virtualization overhead is high (Xen 4.4) (none)
   kernbench demonstrated it
   looking and tracing it
  -  Dario Faggioli

*  IOMMU ABI for guests to map their DMA regions (fair)
  -  Malcolm Crossley

*  dirty vram / IOMMU bug (fair)
  -  Zhang, Yang Z

*  Convert tasklet to per-cpu tasklets (fair)
  -  Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk

*  VMware backdoor (hypercall) (ok)
   Needs to be split up and redone
  -  Don Slutz

*  VPMU - 'perf' support in Xen (good)
   v8 posted
  -  Boris Ostrovsky

*  Cache QoS Monitoring - hypercalls (fair)
   Just hypercalls - no toolstack changes.
   v12 posted
  -  Dongxiao Xu and Shantong Kang

*  1TB slow destruction (ok)
  -  Bob Liu

*  extending mem_access support to PV domain (fair)
   RFC v2
  -  Aravindh Puthiyaparambil (aravindp)

*  Stability fix (good)
  -  Jan Beulich

*  Support controlling the max C-state sub-state (ok)
   v3 posted
  -  Ross Lagerwall

*  Repurpose SEDF Scheduler for Real-time (fair)
   RFC patch posted (v2)
  -  Joshua Whitehead, Robert VanVossen

*  XenRT (Preemptive Global Earliest Deadline First) (fair)
   RFC patch posted (v1)
  -  Meng Xu

*  Introspection of HVM guests (fair)
   RFC v2
  -  Razvan Cojocaru

*  vNUMA in Xen (ok)
   v6 posted
   git://gitorious.org/vnuma/xen_vnuma.git
  -  Elena Ufimtseva

== QEMU ==

*  Rebase of QEMU 2.0 and SeaBIOS (fair)
  -  Ian Jackson

*  Using qemu-upstream in a stubdomain (fair)
   Will use rump kernels.
  -  Ian Jackson

*  Intel IGD PCI GPU passthrough (ok)
   v5 posted
  -  Chen, Tiejun

*  Xen PV block driver in OVMF (UEFI in guest) (fair)
   RFC posted.
  -  Anthony PERARD

== lib{xc,xl} and toolstack ==

*  libxl/xl - xm compatibility mode for mem-max and mem-set; (ok)
  -  Daniel Kiper

*  Rearrange and cleanup installation destination directories (/var -> 
var/lib/xen) (fair)
  -  Daniel Kiper

*  libxl work - JSON to keep track of guest configs (ok)
  -  Wei Liu

*  pvscsi should be targeted for 4.5, a prototype exists (fair)
  -  Olaf Hering

*  xl list --long (and some related xl commands) have some bugs (none)
  -  Zhigang Wang

*  Remus in Xen (libxl) (ok)
   v17
   url: https://github.com/laijs/xen remus-v17
  -  Gui Jianfeng
  -  Yang Hongyang
  -  Dong, Eddie

*  COarse-grain LOck-stepping Virtual Machines in Xen (fair)
   RFC patch posted
  -  Wen Congyang
  -  Gui Jianfeng
  -  Yang Hongyang
  -  Dong, Eddie

*  systemd support (ok)
   v7
  -  Luis R. Rodriguez

*  snapshot API extension (checkpointing disk) (ok)
   v5
  -  Bamvor Jian Zhang

*  extend the xenstore ring with a 'closing' signal (fair)
   RFC patch posted
  -  David Scott

*  Soft affinity for vcpus libxl/xl changes (good)
   v12 posted
  -  Dario Faggioli

== Linux ==

*  Linux block multiqueue (fair)
  -  Arianna Avanzini

*  Netback grant table manipulations (ok)
  -  Zoltan Kiss

*  VPMU - 'perf' support in Linux (ok)
   Depends on Xen patches
  -  Boris Ostrovsky

*  vNUMA in Linux (ok)
   v6 posted
   git://gitorious.org/vnuma/linux_vnuma.git
  -  Elena Ufimtseva

*  vsyscall in Linux (fair)
  -  Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk

*  COLO Agent in Linux (fair)
  -  Gui Jianfeng
  -  Yang Hongyang
  -  Dong, Eddie

*  vAPIC in PVHVM guests (Linux side) (none)
  -  Boris Ostrovsky

*  pvSCSI (ok)
   Initial patch posted.
  -  Juergen Gross

== FreeBSD ==

*  PVH FreeBSD dom0 (ok)
   FreeBSD 11 goal. Toolstack side done in Xen 4.5
  -  Roger Pau Monné

== Other OSes (MiniOS, QNX) ==

*  PV drivers for automotive kernels (fair)
  -  Artem Mygaiev

*  mini-os: xenbus changes for rump kernels (ok)
   git://xenbits.xen.org/people/iwj/rumpuser-xen.git
   branch: base.dev-xen-xenbus.v1..dev-xen-xenbus.v1
   v2 posted
  -  Ian Jackson

== GRUB2 ==

*  GRUB2 multiboot2 (fair)
  -  Daniel Kiper

== OSSTEST ==

*  OSSTest: libvirt (good)
  -  Ian Campbell

== Deferred to Xen 4.6 ==

*  Default to credit2 (none)
   cpu pinning, numa affinity and cpu reservation
  -  George Dunlap

*  "Short" grant copy (just header) of packets. (none)
  -  Zoltan Kiss

*  cpuid leveling (none)
   
http://xenbits.xen.org/people/andrewcoop/feature-levelling/feature-levelling-D.pdf
  -  Andrew Cooper

*  live migration knobs, there is no suitable code yet, just ideas (none)
    http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2014-03/msg00785.html
  -  Olaf Hering

*  Further tmem cleanups/fixes (16TB etc) (fair)
  -  Bob Liu

*  IO-NUMA - hwloc and xl (fair)
   Andrew Cooper had an RFC patch for hwloc
  -  Boris Ostrovsky

*  AMD Radeon PCI GPU passthrough (none)
   Focusing on Xen 4.2 and qemu-traditional
  -  Kelly Zytaruk

*  xl does not handle migrate interruption gracefully (none)
   If you start a localhost migrate, and press "Ctrl-C" in the middle, you get 
two hung domains
  -  Ian Jackson

*  HVM guest NUMA (none)
  -  Matt Wilson

*  PVH - Migration of PVH DomUs. (none)
   Depends on migration2 code
  -  Roger Pau Monné

*  PVH - Migration of guests from a PVH dom0  (none)
   Depends on migration2 code
  -  Roger Pau Monné

*  ARM GICv2m support (none)
  -  Linaro (unknown)

== Up for grabs ==

*  OSSTest - also test Linux PVH guests

*  PoD fixes
   if you boot with memory <= maxmem we have a size estimation bug

*  TLB flushing without locks in Xen

*  xl does not support specifying virtual function for passthrough device
   http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/22

*  PCI hole resize support hvmloader/qemu-traditional/qemu-upstream with 
PCI/GPU passthrough
   http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/28

*  libx{c,l} error handling cleanup

*  Adding missing 'xend' features in libxl

*  xl list -l on a dom0-only system

*  xl list -l doesn't contain tty console port

*  xl: passing more defaults in configuration in xl.conf
   There are a number of options for which it might be useful to pass a default 
in xl.conf.  For example, if we could have a default "backend" parameter for 
vifs, then it would be easy to switch back and forth between a backend in a 
driver domain and a backend in dom0.

*  PVH - PVH working with shadow.
   Based on Tim's work

*  PVH - PCI passthrough for DomU.

*  AMD performance regressions

*  Performance due to hypercall preemption. More preemptions - slower. (none)

== Completed ==

*  alternative_asm in Xen (done)
  -  Feng Wu

*  SMAP (done)
  -  Feng Wu

*  Re-write of vHPET (done)
   aka hvm/hpet: Detect comparator values in the past
  -  Don Slutz

*  vAPIC in PVHVM guests (Xen side) (done)
  -  Boris Ostrovsky

*  libvirt and xl discard support, so that libvirt can start using it (done)
  -  Olaf Hering

*  Xen PVH dom0 (done)
  -  Mukesh Rathor

*  Linux PVH dom0 (done)
  -  Mukesh Rathor

*  OSSTest: upstream QEMU (done)
  -  Ian Campbell

*  amd_ucode cleanups, verify patch size(enhancement) (mostly in master except 
one patch)

*  Data breakpoint Extension support (new-feat) (in master)

*  Feature masking MSR support (enhancement) (in master)

*  Support BRCM TruManage chip (Serial over LAN support) (new-feat) (in master)

*  fix vmce_amd* functions, unify mce_amd mcheck initialization (fixes/cleanups)
  -  Aravind and Suravee

*  NUMA memory scrubbing (done)
  -  Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk

*  ARM  - IOMMU support (done)
  -  Julien Grall

*  ioreq-server, aka secondary emulators (done)
  -  Paul Durrant

*  Netback multiqueue (good)
  -  Wei Liu

*  ARM Interrupt latency reduction (no maintenance interrupts) (good)
  -  Stefano Stabellini

*  Bigger PCI hole in QEMU (done)
   Needs to be rebased
  -  Don Slutz

*  ARM DRA7 support (done)
   v3 posted
   v3 with comments applied
  -  Andrii Tseglytskyi

*  rework VM Generation ID (done)
   v7 posted
  -  David Vrabel

*  Soft affinity for vcpus (was NUMA affinity for vcpus) (good)
   v11 posted
  -  Dario Faggioli

*  Linux pvops of Xen EFI hypercall support (done)
  -  Daniel Kiper


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