Subject: Re: RFC: Network Plugin Architecture (NPA) for vmxnet3

From: Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 17:05:31 -0700

On Tue, 4 May 2010 16:02:25 -0700
Pankaj Thakkar <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Device passthrough technology allows a guest to bypass the hypervisor and drive
> the underlying physical device. VMware has been exploring various ways to
> deliver this technology to users in a manner which is easy to adopt. In this
> process we have prepared an architecture along with Intel - NPA (Network Plugin
> Architecture). NPA allows the guest to use the virtualized NIC vmxnet3 to
> passthrough to a number of physical NICs which support it. The document below
> provides an overview of NPA.
> 
> We intend to upgrade the upstreamed vmxnet3 driver to implement NPA so that
> Linux users can exploit the benefits provided by passthrough devices in a
> seamless manner while retaining the benefits of virtualization. The document
> below tries to answer most of the questions which we anticipated. Please let us
> know your comments and queries.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Pankaj Thakkar <[email-masked]>

Code please. Also, it has to work for all architectures not just VMware and
Intel.