Nakajima, Jun wrote:
> On 10/3/2008 5:35:39 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Nakajima, Jun wrote:
>>> What's the significance of supporting multiple interfaces to the
>>> same guest simultaneously, i.e. _runtime_? We don't want the guests
>>> to run on such a literarily Frankenstein machine. And practically,
>>> such testing/debugging would be good only for Halloween :-).
>>>
>> By that notion, EVERY CPU currently shipped is a "Frankenstein" CPU,
>> since at very least they export Intel-derived and AMD-derived interfaces.
>> This is in other words, a ridiculous claim.
>
> The big difference here is that you could create a VM at runtime (by
> combining the existing interfaces) that did not exist before (or was not
> tested before). For example, a hypervisor could show hyper-v, osx-v (if any),
> linux-v, etc., and a guest could create a VM with hyper-v MMU, osx-v
> interrupt handling, Linux-v timer, etc. And such combinations/variations can
> grow exponentially.
>
> Or are you suggesting that multiple interfaces be _available_ to guests at
> runtime but the guest chooses one of them?
>
The guest chooses what it wants to use. We already do this: for
example, we use CPUID leaf 0x80000006 preferentially to CPUID leaf 2,
simply because it is a better interface.
And you're absolutely right that the guest may end up picking and
choosing different parts of the interfaces. That's how it is supposed
to work.
-hpa
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