 6576b74b0b
			
		
	
	
		6576b74b0b
		
	
	
	
	
		
			
			The official spelling is QEMU. Signed-off-by: Stefan Weil <sw@weilnetz.de> Reviewed-by: Andreas Färber <afaerber@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Blue Swirl <blauwirbel@gmail.com>
		
			
				
	
	
		
			97 lines
		
	
	
		
			4.3 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Plaintext
		
	
	
	
	
	
			
		
		
	
	
			97 lines
		
	
	
		
			4.3 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Plaintext
		
	
	
	
	
	
| 
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| Device Specification for Inter-VM shared memory device
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| ------------------------------------------------------
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| 
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| The Inter-VM shared memory device is designed to share a region of memory to
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| userspace in multiple virtual guests.  The memory region does not belong to any
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| guest, but is a POSIX memory object on the host.  Optionally, the device may
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| support sending interrupts to other guests sharing the same memory region.
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| 
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| 
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| The Inter-VM PCI device
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| -----------------------
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| 
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| *BARs*
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| 
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| The device supports three BARs.  BAR0 is a 1 Kbyte MMIO region to support
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| registers.  BAR1 is used for MSI-X when it is enabled in the device.  BAR2 is
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| used to map the shared memory object from the host.  The size of BAR2 is
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| specified when the guest is started and must be a power of 2 in size.
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| 
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| *Registers*
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| 
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| The device currently supports 4 registers of 32-bits each.  Registers
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| are used for synchronization between guests sharing the same memory object when
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| interrupts are supported (this requires using the shared memory server).
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| 
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| The server assigns each VM an ID number and sends this ID number to the QEMU
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| process when the guest starts.
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| 
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| enum ivshmem_registers {
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|     IntrMask = 0,
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|     IntrStatus = 4,
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|     IVPosition = 8,
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|     Doorbell = 12
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| };
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| 
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| The first two registers are the interrupt mask and status registers.  Mask and
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| status are only used with pin-based interrupts.  They are unused with MSI
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| interrupts.
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| 
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| Status Register: The status register is set to 1 when an interrupt occurs.
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| 
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| Mask Register: The mask register is bitwise ANDed with the interrupt status
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| and the result will raise an interrupt if it is non-zero.  However, since 1 is
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| the only value the status will be set to, it is only the first bit of the mask
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| that has any effect.  Therefore interrupts can be masked by setting the first
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| bit to 0 and unmasked by setting the first bit to 1.
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| 
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| IVPosition Register: The IVPosition register is read-only and reports the
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| guest's ID number.  The guest IDs are non-negative integers.  When using the
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| server, since the server is a separate process, the VM ID will only be set when
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| the device is ready (shared memory is received from the server and accessible via
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| the device).  If the device is not ready, the IVPosition will return -1.
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| Applications should ensure that they have a valid VM ID before accessing the
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| shared memory.
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| 
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| Doorbell Register:  To interrupt another guest, a guest must write to the
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| Doorbell register.  The doorbell register is 32-bits, logically divided into
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| two 16-bit fields.  The high 16-bits are the guest ID to interrupt and the low
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| 16-bits are the interrupt vector to trigger.  The semantics of the value
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| written to the doorbell depends on whether the device is using MSI or a regular
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| pin-based interrupt.  In short, MSI uses vectors while regular interrupts set the
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| status register.
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| 
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| Regular Interrupts
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| 
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| If regular interrupts are used (due to either a guest not supporting MSI or the
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| user specifying not to use them on startup) then the value written to the lower
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| 16-bits of the Doorbell register results is arbitrary and will trigger an
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| interrupt in the destination guest.
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| 
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| Message Signalled Interrupts
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| 
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| A ivshmem device may support multiple MSI vectors.  If so, the lower 16-bits
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| written to the Doorbell register must be between 0 and the maximum number of
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| vectors the guest supports.  The lower 16 bits written to the doorbell is the
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| MSI vector that will be raised in the destination guest.  The number of MSI
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| vectors is configurable but it is set when the VM is started.
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| 
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| The important thing to remember with MSI is that it is only a signal, no status
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| is set (since MSI interrupts are not shared).  All information other than the
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| interrupt itself should be communicated via the shared memory region.  Devices
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| supporting multiple MSI vectors can use different vectors to indicate different
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| events have occurred.  The semantics of interrupt vectors are left to the
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| user's discretion.
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| 
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| 
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| Usage in the Guest
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| ------------------
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| 
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| The shared memory device is intended to be used with the provided UIO driver.
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| Very little configuration is needed.  The guest should map BAR0 to access the
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| registers (an array of 32-bit ints allows simple writing) and map BAR2 to
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| access the shared memory region itself.  The size of the shared memory region
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| is specified when the guest (or shared memory server) is started.  A guest may
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| map the whole shared memory region or only part of it.
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