RE: [Qemu-devel] Graphics Device Passthrough
On Sun, 23 May 2010, adhyas.avas...@nokia.com wrote: In the options for qemu, I did see an option that allowed me to define a host bus:dev:fn number to be accessible to the guest. This was not one of the USB options I believe. So I assumed some kind of pass-through support is present. For a PCI pass-through, we probably would not need to emulate the device completely (or else what is the need of pass-through). We can emulate just a few of the capabilities, and the command/INT registers that are needed to be emulated. Even VMware pass-throughs the rest AFAIK. I didn’t realize qemu-kvm did not have this support yet. PS: I have read papers that read about similar experiments people have carried on qemu. Didn't realize no code was checked back in the source tree. Thanks for letting me know. Xen supports graphic device passthrought since version 4.0, if you are interested the wiki page is here: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough depending on the device you want to passthrough it might be easy or very difficult though...
[Qemu-devel] Graphics Device Passthrough
Hello (newbie hacker to qemu community, so please excuse novice ignorances) I wish to pass-through a graphics controller to my Windows 7 VM running on qemu-kvm. I would like it to be PCI-Express (if that works, that is). Are there any recommended devices that I should purchase for this experiment? I would like the device to also be accessible from my Fedora Core 10 host. Basically, I wish to have the device pass-through when I run the VM, I then wish to eject the device out of the VM (hot-remove), and then give it back to Fedora Core 10 to use. This is how my experiment is defined. I am looking for suggestions on graphics controllers I should think of purchasing for this experiment. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Adhyas
Re: [Qemu-devel] Graphics Device Passthrough
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Adhyas Avasthi adh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello (newbie hacker to qemu community, so please excuse novice ignorances) I wish to pass-through a graphics controller to my Windows 7 VM running on qemu-kvm. I would like it to be PCI-Express (if that works, that is). Are there any recommended devices that I should purchase for this experiment? I would like the device to also be accessible from my Fedora Core 10 host. Basically, I wish to have the device pass-through when I run the VM, I then wish to eject the device out of the VM (hot-remove), and then give it back to Fedora Core 10 to use. This is how my experiment is defined. I am looking for suggestions on graphics controllers I should think of purchasing for this experiment. Any help would be appreciated. I don't think PCI pass-through is implemented yet. If there are no interrupts, it could be made to work. QEMU only emulates basic VGA, Cirrus CLGD 54xx, VMWare and XenFB devices. Only VGA or Cirrus are physically available and these should not be expensive if they can be found. For accelerated 2D or 3D, new emulated devices would be needed to be added to QEMU, so this would make your experiment much bigger. It could be interesting to emulate some very recent devices, like NVidia or Radeon cards with a GPU. It's obvious that emulation with only host CPU support would be very slow but in your pass-through setting that would not matter. The reverse, using host GPU devices to emulate for example x86, could also be useful, though the processing power of a single unit in a GPU is not that much. If OGP is still alive, that may be another alternative, free emulator for a graphics cards with Free-licensed specifications and Free Software drivers. The general trend is to virtualize the display, see for example Spice efforts.
RE: [Qemu-devel] Graphics Device Passthrough
In the options for qemu, I did see an option that allowed me to define a host bus:dev:fn number to be accessible to the guest. This was not one of the USB options I believe. So I assumed some kind of pass-through support is present. For a PCI pass-through, we probably would not need to emulate the device completely (or else what is the need of pass-through). We can emulate just a few of the capabilities, and the command/INT registers that are needed to be emulated. Even VMware pass-throughs the rest AFAIK. I didn’t realize qemu-kvm did not have this support yet. PS: I have read papers that read about similar experiments people have carried on qemu. Didn't realize no code was checked back in the source tree. Thanks for letting me know. Thanks, Adhyas -Original Message- From: qemu-devel-bounces+adhyas.avasthi=nokia@nongnu.org [mailto:qemu-devel-bounces+adhyas.avasthi=nokia@nongnu.org] On Behalf Of ext Blue Swirl Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2010 12:58 PM To: Adhyas Avasthi Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Graphics Device Passthrough On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Adhyas Avasthi adh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello (newbie hacker to qemu community, so please excuse novice ignorances) I wish to pass-through a graphics controller to my Windows 7 VM running on qemu-kvm. I would like it to be PCI-Express (if that works, that is). Are there any recommended devices that I should purchase for this experiment? I would like the device to also be accessible from my Fedora Core 10 host. Basically, I wish to have the device pass-through when I run the VM, I then wish to eject the device out of the VM (hot-remove), and then give it back to Fedora Core 10 to use. This is how my experiment is defined. I am looking for suggestions on graphics controllers I should think of purchasing for this experiment. Any help would be appreciated. I don't think PCI pass-through is implemented yet. If there are no interrupts, it could be made to work. QEMU only emulates basic VGA, Cirrus CLGD 54xx, VMWare and XenFB devices. Only VGA or Cirrus are physically available and these should not be expensive if they can be found. For accelerated 2D or 3D, new emulated devices would be needed to be added to QEMU, so this would make your experiment much bigger. It could be interesting to emulate some very recent devices, like NVidia or Radeon cards with a GPU. It's obvious that emulation with only host CPU support would be very slow but in your pass-through setting that would not matter. The reverse, using host GPU devices to emulate for example x86, could also be useful, though the processing power of a single unit in a GPU is not that much. If OGP is still alive, that may be another alternative, free emulator for a graphics cards with Free-licensed specifications and Free Software drivers. The general trend is to virtualize the display, see for example Spice efforts.
