[[!template id=project

title="Support latest features of Xen"

contact="""
[port-xen](mailto:port-xen@NetBSD.org)
"""

mentors="""
[Jean-Yves Migeon](mailto:jym@NetBSD.org)
"""

category="ports"
difficulty="hard"
duration="3-6 months, depending on subsystem considered"

description="""
This project's work is composed of smaller components that can be worked on independently from others, all related to the Xen port.

Xen has support of a number of machine-dependent features that NetBSD currently does not implement for the x86's port of the Xen architecture. Notably:

- PCI passthrough, where PCI devices can be exposed to a guest via Xen protected mem/regs mappings;
- IOMMU (Intel's VT-d, or AMD's IOV) that protects memory access from devices for I/O, needed for safe operation of PCI/device passthrough;
- ACPI, and more specifically, ACPI states. Most commonly used on native systems to suspend/resume/shutdown a host;
- CPU and memory hotplugging;
- more elaborate VM debugging through gdbx, a lightweight debugger included with Xen.

The purpose of this project is to either add the missing parts inside NetBSD (some requiring native implementation first like [IOMMU](https://wiki.netbsd.org/projects/project/x86-iommu/)), or implement the needed interface to plug current native x86 systems (like [pmf(9](https://man.netbsd.org/pmf.9)) for ACPI hypercalls).
"""
]]