[Lguest] powerpc64 port anyone?

Hollis Blanchard hollisb at us.ibm.com
Thu Apr 23 07:41:07 EST 2009


On Thu, 2009-04-23 at 01:19 +0400, Wartan Hachaturow wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Hollis Blanchard <hollisb at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > KVM supports embedded PowerPC (440 and e500 at the moment), and there
> > has been some work to port it to ppc64 cores like 970 (without using the
> > hardware extensions, since these are unavailable on shipping systems).
> > If you're interested, you should check out the trees at
> > http://powerkvm.org .
> 
> Wow, didn't know about that port. I'll have a look.

The main port was PowerPC 440, and that and e500 support are already
upstream in KVM. Some details are available here:
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/PowerPC

The 970/Cell stuff Alex is doing is only loosely connected to that
(ppc64 supervisor mode is very different from 440/e500), and that's the
first URL I gave you.

> Do I understand right that, all other things being equal, lguest
> should be easier to port than full KVM?

For PowerPC at least, it's not significant. KVM emulates hardware's
behavior when necessary, while lguest modifies the guest to make
hypercalls in those exact same places (avoiding the need for emulation).
That's not really the hard part of the implementation though, which is
why I say it's not significant.

Also, KVM allows you to run potentially any out-of-the-box kernel,
without needing to port it to another interface.

If you need to, you can still add hypercalls to KVM, but in general it's
best to do that only in performance-critical areas. Functionality first,
performance second.

> > What hardware do you have available?
> 
> G5, p5, QS22, JS22, lots of PS3's.
> No ppc32, though, but that should be quite easy to get.

That's quite a collection. :)

-- 
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center




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