Hi! Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? Where can I find information about this? Thanks! /Klasse -- View this message in context: http://xen.1045712.n5.nabble.com/Portin-Xen-to-other-HW-platform-tp5716511.html Sent from the Xen - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>> On 29.05.13 at 16:02, klasse <claen763@student.liu.se> wrote: > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)?A PowerPC port existed in Xen up to 3.2.x, so your best bet would probably be to revive that one. But of course "hard" is a relative term and depends very much on your porting experience...> Where can I find information about this?You''d just need to get started I guess - there''s no guide to this or anything alike. Jan
On Wed, 29 May 2013, klasse wrote:> Hi! > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? > > Where can I find information about this?PPC has an "hypervisor mode" in hardware, right? If so, it shouldn''t be very difficult, you can follow the footsteps of our ARMv7 port. It should take about 1-2 years for a 2-3 people team to complete the port.
On Wed, 29 May 2013, Stefano Stabellini wrote:> On Wed, 29 May 2013, klasse wrote: > > Hi! > > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? > > > > Where can I find information about this? > > PPC has an "hypervisor mode" in hardware, right? > If so, it shouldn''t be very difficult, you can follow the footsteps of > our ARMv7 port. > It should take about 1-2 years for a 2-3 people team to complete the > port.Just to add a bit of context, it took Ian and me about 1 year and an half to get this far in the ARM port, supporting ARMv7 and ARMv8 and two different hardware platforms (Arndale and Versatile Express). We only worked half-time on it, but we already knew Xen and Linux well. Now we are almost feature complete but we are still missing PCI passthrough and live-migration. So I am guessing it would take about 1 year for a couple of people to get the port in the state we are in now on ARMv7 for 1 board. If the engineers are good and already PPC experts it would probably take only 6 months. Then it might take another 6 months/1 year to have it product quality and implement more advanced features like live-migration.
On Wed, 2013-05-29 at 15:49 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:> >>> On 29.05.13 at 16:02, klasse <claen763@student.liu.se> wrote: > > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? > > A PowerPC port existed in Xen up to 3.2.x, so your best bet would > probably be to revive that one.Do you remember if that was that a PV port (PV MMU in particular)? PPC has a hypervisor mode (or modes?) but does it have second stage paging? If it does then a hybrid model like we''ve gone for on ARM would be preferable for a new/rejuvenated port, IMNSHO.> But of course "hard" is a relative > term and depends very much on your porting experience...Exactly. Ian.
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 08:51:23AM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:> On Wed, 2013-05-29 at 15:49 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote: > > >>> On 29.05.13 at 16:02, klasse <claen763@student.liu.se> wrote: > > > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? > > > > A PowerPC port existed in Xen up to 3.2.x, so your best bet would > > probably be to revive that one. > > Do you remember if that was that a PV port (PV MMU in particular)? > > PPC has a hypervisor mode (or modes?) but does it have second stage > paging? If it does then a hybrid model like we''ve gone for on ARM would > be preferable for a new/rejuvenated port, IMNSHO. >Some information about the old PPC port is here: http://wiki.xen.org/old-wiki/xenwiki/XenPPC.html -- Pasi
>>> Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@citrix.com> 05/30/13 9:53 AM >>> >On Wed, 2013-05-29 at 15:49 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote: >> >>> On 29.05.13 at 16:02, klasse <claen763@student.liu.se> wrote: >> > Is it hard work to port Xen to a custom HW-platform (with a PPC CPU)? >> >> A PowerPC port existed in Xen up to 3.2.x, so your best bet would >> probably be to revive that one. > >Do you remember if that was that a PV port (PV MMU in particular)?No, I don''t. In fact I know nothing about this port other than it existed. Jan