diff options
| author | Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@suse.com> | 2015-02-13 17:13:40 +1030 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> | 2015-02-13 17:15:44 +1030 |
| commit | a2e199915725e666772dd077dbffbef154e58096 (patch) | |
| tree | 10b984c9ca4f9c1957808d39603ee095f0c7d71a /Documentation/virtual | |
| parent | d9bab50aa46ce46dd4537d455eb13b200cdac516 (diff) | |
virtual: Documentation: simplify and generalize paravirt_ops.txt
The general documentation we have for pv_ops is currenty present
on the IA64 docs, but since this documentation covers IA64 xen
enablement and IA64 Xen support got ripped out a while ago
through commit d52eefb47 present since v3.14-rc1 lets just
simplify, generalize and move the pv_ops documentation to a
shared place.
Cc: Isaku Yamahata <yamahata@valinux.co.jp>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Cc: Alok Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org
Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
Cc: Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@intel.com>
Cc: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>
Cc: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org
Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/virtual')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/virtual/00-INDEX | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt | 32 |
2 files changed, 35 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/00-INDEX b/Documentation/virtual/00-INDEX index e952d30bbf0f..af0d23968ee7 100644 --- a/Documentation/virtual/00-INDEX +++ b/Documentation/virtual/00-INDEX @@ -2,6 +2,9 @@ Virtualization support in the Linux kernel. 00-INDEX - this file. + +paravirt_ops.txt + - Describes the Linux kernel pv_ops to support different hypervisors kvm/ - Kernel Virtual Machine. See also http://linux-kvm.org uml/ diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt b/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..d4881c00e339 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +Paravirt_ops +============ + +Linux provides support for different hypervisor virtualization technologies. +Historically different binary kernels would be required in order to support +different hypervisors, this restriction was removed with pv_ops. +Linux pv_ops is a virtualization API which enables support for different +hypervisors. It allows each hypervisor to override critical operations and +allows a single kernel binary to run on all supported execution environments +including native machine -- without any hypervisors. + +pv_ops provides a set of function pointers which represent operations +corresponding to low level critical instructions and high level +functionalities in various areas. pv-ops allows for optimizations at run +time by enabling binary patching of the low-ops critical operations +at boot time. + +pv_ops operations are classified into three categories: + +- simple indirect call + These operations correspond to high level functionality where it is + known that the overhead of indirect call isn't very important. + +- indirect call which allows optimization with binary patch + Usually these operations correspond to low level critical instructions. They + are called frequently and are performance critical. The overhead is + very important. + +- a set of macros for hand written assembly code + Hand written assembly codes (.S files) also need paravirtualization + because they include sensitive instructions or some of code paths in + them are very performance critical. |