Re: [Xen-devel] Using LinuxBIOS as virtual firmware

Yinghai Lu
Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:38:14 -0000

1. virtual firmware do the pci init ( including bus enumerating and
resource allocating)
2. virtual firmware create the acpi tables, mptable and irqtable
according to driver model and cpu accessing instead of let loader to
create thoese table.
3. So will have more clear boundary between driver model and vitutal firmware.

in the ioemu side, need to update the current code to AMD device.

Maybe the good way is using linuxbios+bochs and updating driver model
in qemu at the same time

Thanks

Yinghai Lu


On 7/15/06, Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@cl.cam.ac.uk>
wrote:
>
> On 15 Jul 2006, at 01:40, Lu, Yinghai wrote:
>
> > Is it a good way?
> >
> > Any comment?
>
> It would be helpful to have a clearer explanation of the limitations of
> the current firmware, the benefits of your new approach, and likely
> effort and steps needed to get there. Also to compare that with the
> difficulty of solving any current problems by simply patching the
> current code base.
>
> For example, if the only aim is to emulate AMD64 platforms more
> accurately, maybe that is best done by evolving the current code. But
> moving to LinuxBIOS might have other benefits too -- if so they need
> explaining.
>
> Bear in mind also there''s an increasing amount of work going into
> hvmloader (e.g., SMBIOS patches) that will probably be impacted by a
> move to a whole new firmware architecture.
>
>   -- Keir
>
>
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