Microvm is a machine type inspired by both NEMU and Firecracker, and constructed after the machine model implemented by the latter.
It's main purpose is providing users a KVM-only machine type with fast boot times, minimal attack surface (measured as the number of IO ports and MMIO regions exposed to the Guest) and small footprint (specially when combined with the ongoing QEMU modularization effort). Normally, other than the device support provided by KVM itself, microvm only supports virtio-mmio devices. Microvm also includes a legacy mode, which adds an ISA bus with a 16550A serial port, useful for being able to see the early boot kernel messages. This is the list of the exposed IO ports and MMIO regions when running in non-legacy mode: address-space: memory 00000000d0000000-00000000d00001ff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000200-00000000d00003ff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000400-00000000d00005ff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000600-00000000d00007ff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000800-00000000d00009ff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000a00-00000000d0000bff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000c00-00000000d0000dff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000d0000e00-00000000d0000fff (prio 0, i/o): virtio-mmio 00000000fee00000-00000000feefffff (prio 4096, i/o): kvm-apic-msi address-space: I/O 0000000000000000-000000000000ffff (prio 0, i/o): io 0000000000000020-0000000000000021 (prio 0, i/o): kvm-pic 0000000000000040-0000000000000043 (prio 0, i/o): kvm-pit 000000000000007e-000000000000007f (prio 0, i/o): kvmvapic 00000000000000a0-00000000000000a1 (prio 0, i/o): kvm-pic 00000000000004d0-00000000000004d0 (prio 0, i/o): kvm-elcr 00000000000004d1-00000000000004d1 (prio 0, i/o): kvm-elcr A QEMU instance with the microvm machine type can be invoked this way: - Normal mode: qemu-system-x86_64 -M microvm -m 512m -smp 2 \ -kernel vmlinux -append "console=hvc0 root=/dev/vda" \ -nodefaults -no-user-config \ -chardev pty,id=virtiocon0,server \ -device virtio-serial-device \ -device virtconsole,chardev=virtiocon0 \ -drive id=test,file=test.img,format=raw,if=none \ -device virtio-blk-device,drive=test \ -netdev tap,id=tap0,script=no,downscript=no \ -device virtio-net-device,netdev=tap0 - Legacy mode: qemu-system-x86_64 -M microvm,legacy -m 512m -smp 2 \ -kernel vmlinux -append "console=ttyS0 root=/dev/vda" \ -nodefaults -no-user-config \ -drive id=test,file=test.img,format=raw,if=none \ -device virtio-blk-device,drive=test \ -netdev tap,id=tap0,script=no,downscript=no \ -device virtio-net-device,netdev=tap0 \ -serial stdio Sergio Lopez (4): hw/i386: Factorize CPU routine hw/virtio: Factorize virtio-mmio headers hw/i386: Add an Intel MPTable generator hw/i386: Introduce the microvm machine type default-configs/i386-softmmu.mak | 1 + hw/i386/Kconfig | 4 + hw/i386/Makefile.objs | 2 + hw/i386/cpu.c | 174 +++++++ hw/i386/microvm.c | 518 ++++++++++++++++++++ hw/i386/mptable.c | 157 ++++++ hw/i386/pc.c | 151 +----- hw/i386/pc_piix.c | 3 +- hw/i386/pc_q35.c | 3 +- hw/virtio/virtio-mmio.c | 35 +- hw/virtio/virtio-mmio.h | 60 +++ include/hw/i386/apic.h | 1 + include/hw/i386/cpu-internal.h | 32 ++ include/hw/i386/microvm.h | 85 ++++ include/hw/i386/mptable.h | 37 ++ include/standard-headers/linux/mpspec_def.h | 182 +++++++ 16 files changed, 1264 insertions(+), 181 deletions(-) create mode 100644 hw/i386/cpu.c create mode 100644 hw/i386/microvm.c create mode 100644 hw/i386/mptable.c create mode 100644 hw/virtio/virtio-mmio.h create mode 100644 include/hw/i386/cpu-internal.h create mode 100644 include/hw/i386/microvm.h create mode 100644 include/hw/i386/mptable.h create mode 100644 include/standard-headers/linux/mpspec_def.h -- 2.21.0