Re: Use CPUID to communicate with the hypervisor.

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Sep 26 2008 - 20:36:35 EST


Alok Kataria wrote:

This is great, obviously... although we'll have to deal with legacy
methods for a while if not indefinitely (just as we have to for
pre-CPUID processors).

Ok, do you think we should keep those (legacy) interfaces separate so
that they can be phased out whenever the time is right.


I don't, realistically, think we can phase them out for a very long time, and then it's usually a "why bother". What we want to do is abstract them so they don't make the rest of the code suck.


I would like to see this as a generic hypervisor way to get frequency
rather than a VMware specific thingy.
In order for *that* to be safe, you'd have to have well-defined ranges
for different virtualization vendors where each of them can define their
own stuff.

My motivation for doing this is to have a standard across all the
hypervisor's. If all the different hypervisor guys can come to some
sought of consensus on the various hypervisor leafs that would help keep
this simple and a lot more maintainable.


Agreed. However, that's obviously beyond our immediate control.

-hpa
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