Xen users - Apr 2008 - Decent motherboard with VT-d (Intel) support?

I know most of the motherboards based off of the Intel Q35 northbridge
usually have VT-d options for it to be enabled or disabled in the
BIOS.  I''ve heard the same for Intel 5400''s and Intel
3200/3210''s but
been looking through manuals for various server boards and don''t see
VT-d options in the BIOS.

However, I was wondering if anyone had success stories or suggestions
on a motherboard which support VT-d on Intel boards or if there are any
for AMD CPU''s for their equivalent.  (I keep seeing references to IOMMU
for AMD but haven''t seen any boards out supporting it in my brief
search).  I would like to test PCI passthru to HVM''s.

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Daniel Kao
Übermind, Inc.
dkao@ubermind.com
Seattle, WA, U.S.A. 


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>I know most of the motherboards based off of the Intel Q35 northbridge
usually have VT-d options for it to >be enabled or disabled in the BIOS. 
I''ve heard the same for Intel 5400''s and Intel
3200/3210''s but been >looking through manuals for various server
boards and don''t see VT-d options in the BIOS.
>
>However, I was wondering if anyone had success stories or suggestions on a
motherboard which support >VT-d on Intel boards or if there are any for AMD
CPU''s for their equivalent.  (I keep seeing references to >IOMMU for
AMD but haven''t seen any boards out supporting it in my brief search). 
I would like to test PCI >passthru to HVM''s.
I am about to do this on a new DL380G5 with the newer 5000P chipset supporting
the Quad Cores. As far as pass through to an HVM, I understand that needs the pv
drivers which aren''t yet stable.

Post your progress/success...

jlc

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> >However, I was wondering if anyone had success stories or suggestions
on a
> > motherboard which support >VT-d on Intel boards or if there are any
for
> > AMD CPU''s for their equivalent.  (I keep seeing references to
>IOMMU for
> > AMD but haven''t seen any boards out supporting it in my brief
search).  I
> > would like to test PCI >passthru to HVM''s.
>
> I am about to do this on a new DL380G5 with the newer 5000P chipset
> supporting the Quad Cores. As far as pass through to an HVM, I understand
> that needs the pv drivers which aren''t yet stable.
The idea behind passthrough to HVM guests using IOMMU is that it should be 
possible without an PV drivers being installed in the guest.  The IOMMU 
functionality takes care of making the memory layout look like a fully 
virtualised guest expects it to, protecting the rest of memory from the 
guest, etc...

There has also been code from Neocleus for HVM guest passthrough without IOMMU 
but again this didn''t require PV drivers in the guest.

I think that VT-d passthrough of PCI devices to HVM guests may be possible in 
the next release (if it isn''t possible in the previous one).  There
were
later patches submitted to allow the VT-d IOMMU to provide protections when 
passing PCI devices through to PV guests too (without this, giving a PV guest 
a PCI device implies giving it equivalent power and trust as dom0 itself, 
since it could abuse the device to take over the machine) but I don''t
recall
the status of these.

Cheers,
Mark


-- 
Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/)

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