pvops/pvh - Runtime Paravirtualised/Native Boot with PV drivers in an HVM container in PVH mode

Contact: port-xen
Duration estimate: 48 hours

Abstract: This is the final step towards PVH mode. This is relevant only for DomU. Xen is moving to this eventual dom0 pvh support model. This project depends on completion of pv-on-hvm.

Deliverables:

operational interrupt (event) handling
PV only drivers.

Implementation:

Following on from the pv-on-hvm project, this project removes all remaining dependencies on native drivers. All drivers are PV only. Interrupt setup and handling is via the "event" mechanism.

Scope (Timelines):

This project has some uncertainty based on the change in the interrupt mechanism. Since the interrupt mechanism moves from apic + IDT based, to event based, there's room for debug/testing spillover.

Further, private APIs may need to be developed to parition the pv and native setup and management code for both mechanisms.

See: http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Virtualization_Spectrum#Almost_fully_PV:_PVH_mode