RE: [Xen-users] Firewire, PCI TV Tuner Card, PCI Wireless LAN Card, and USB Device Support Under Windows XP Xen Guest

["Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Teo En Ming [mailto:space.time.universe@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 22 May 2007 15:55
> To: Petersson, Mats
> Cc: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Firewire, PCI TV Tuner Card, PCI 
> Wireless LAN Card, and USB Device Support Under Windows XP Xen Guest
> 
> Hi
> 
> Thank you for your reply.
> 
> May I know when will IOMMU hardware be arriving? Any specific 
> roadmap/dates?

I don't work for the right part of AMD to know the planned (or actual)
release-dates of new products, and I don't quite know which product(s)
the IOMMU will go into. It's not going to happen in the next few weeks,
I can assure you of that, but as I said, I don't really know much about
which parts will come out when - I usually know that some new product
has been released when it's announced by e-mail to all AMDers. 
> 
> I think I will still be going for current virtualization 
> processors. I will still be able to install video editing 
> software inside Windows XP guests and do all my video editing 
> there, while I will move all other computing activities to my 
> linux host operating system. 

Yes, as far as I can determine, there's nothing in Video editing that
would be hardware specific, so it should work just fine in a virtual
Windows system. [Although if the graphics requirements are high for the
video editing software, you may still need to use a dedicated machine
for that, rather than a virtual machine, simply to get the graphics
performance]. 
> 
> Will I be able to play Windows-based PC games inside Windows guests?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Yes, as long as they don't require high-end 3D graphics.
You can't use 3D graphics cards for the same reason as any other PCI
device (AGP8x is PCI from software and most hardware standpoints, it's
just a different connector and somewhat different clock and signaling). 

--
Mats
> 
> 
> 
> On 5/22/07, Petersson, Mats < Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx 
> <mailto:Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx> > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>       > -----Original Message-----
>       > From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>       > [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
>       > Teo En Ming
>       > Sent: 22 May 2007 14:44
>       > To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>       > Subject: [Xen-users] Firewire, PCI TV Tuner Card, PCI
>       > Wireless LAN Card, and USB Device Support Under 
> Windows XP Xen Guest 
>       >
>       > Dear All,
>       >
>       > Assuming that I buy a HVM compatible processor and
>       > motherboard, and having installed a linux host operating
>       > system with a Xen kernel, I proceed to install a Windows XP 
>       > guest virtual machine. The question is:
>       >
>       > Will I be able to use the firewire ports, USB ports, TV Tuner
>       > program and wireless LAN card inside Windows XP guest VM?
>       
>       Nope, none of these devices (aside from limited USB 
> support, possibly), 
>       will work under Xen, since (at present) there is no support to
>       hide/assign PCI devices to the HVM domain. This in turn 
> is because of
>       the fact that PCI devices access memory directly, which 
> isn't going to
>       work when Xen has told "lies" [1] to the Windows guest 
> about where the
>       memory is. So when the guest OS tells the PCI device 
> where in memory
>       something is, it will not know that this is not the 
> ACTUAL physical 
>       address. And there's no easy way to solve this in software only.
>       
>       In future generations of processors/chipsets, there 
> will be IOMMU
>       hardware that allows us to redirect the memory requests from a
>       particular PCI device, so that we can continue to hide 
> the ACTUAL 
>       physical address and still use the PCI devices within a 
> guest. But
>       that's a little way out at this time.
>       
>       
>       [1] All operating systems want memory to start at 
> address zero. Since
>       only one CAN have this address, guests in HVM-mode will 
> get a fake 
>       memory map that starts at zero and goes to whatever 
> size it's configured
>       to. The fact that the ACTUAL physical address of the 
> guest's memory is
>       somewhere else is completely hidden from the guest by 
> using either 
>       shadow-paging or hardware assisted paging (AMD Nested 
> paging or Intel's
>       corresponding technology) [once this technology reaches 
> customers,
>       sometime later this year or so].
>       
>       
>       > Will I be able to do video editing inside Windows XP guest 
>       > VM? Or is networking the one and only feature that is
>       > supported under Windows XP guest operating system? And I
>       > won't be able to use anything else inside Windows XP guest?
>       
>       You should be able to edit video in the guest, as long 
> as you don't rely 
>       on hardware features in PCI devices to do this.
>       
>       Likewise, I don't see why you need to use Windows to 
> connect to the
>       Wireless network, you can just as well hide the fact 
> that it's wireless
>       from Windows, and just use virtual network device, and 
> use the Linux 
>       bridge setting to connect it to the physical Wireless device.
>       
>       But you are correct, that the current technology only 
> allows a limited
>       set of hardware features within the guest. This is a hardware
>       restriction, and it's nothing to do with Xen in itsels, 
> but with the 
>       current state of hardware. Future generations of 
> hardware will remove
>       some or all of these restrictions (but leaving one remaining
>       restriction: each guest will HAVE to have it's own 
> hardware to access -
>       no sharing of a single device without interfacing 
> through a virtual 
>       device - this is because all OS's requires that the 
> hardware they
>       control is their own. There are hardware devices (such 
> as network cards)
>       that support "multi-access" by providing multiple 
> device-instances. 
>       These of course can be shared, as they are from a 
> software standpoint
>       multiple devices, and each device will thus have it's 
> sole owner).
>       
>       --
>       Mats
>       >
>       > Thank you.
>       >
>       >
>       
>       
>       
> 
> 
> 



_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users