tree a4cd502d0abb4dbf0c6e59f998152a22cb4b1606
parent 2e3ee613480563a6d5c01b57d342e65cc58c06df
author Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com> 1343744182 -0600
committer Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com> 1343744182 -0600

vfio: VFIO core

VFIO is a secure user level driver for use with both virtual machines
and user level drivers.  VFIO makes use of IOMMU groups to ensure the
isolation of devices in use, allowing unprivileged user access.  It's
intended that VFIO will replace KVM device assignment and UIO drivers
(in cases where the target platform includes a sufficiently capable
IOMMU).

New in this version of VFIO is support for IOMMU groups managed
through the IOMMU core as well as a rework of the API, removing the
group merge interface.  We now go back to a model more similar to
original VFIO with UIOMMU support where the file descriptor obtained
from /dev/vfio/vfio allows access to the IOMMU, but only after a
group is added, avoiding the previous privilege issues with this type
of model.  IOMMU support is also now fully modular as IOMMUs have
vastly different interface requirements on different platforms.  VFIO
users are able to query and initialize the IOMMU model of their
choice.

Please see the follow-on Documentation commit for further description
and usage example.

Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>