[Qemu-discuss] Virtualizing a PCIe Device

[Chris Johnson]

Hello,

 

I am attempting to virtualize a PCIe card with multiple devices. I have a driver currently written for use with the devices without virtualization.

 

I would like to be able to provide access to the PCIe devices to the VMs while simultaneously allowing the host OS to still access the PCIe devices.

 

My current approach is to write my own front-end driver to run in the VM and my own back-end driver to run in the host OS. The back-end driver would communicate with my current driver and eventually these two might be merged.

 

I am currently stuck on figure out how to get the front-end and back-end drivers to communicate with each other though. My current understanding is that I need to provide my back-end driver to QEMU which will then create a device in the VM that can be picked up by my front-end driver. From what I have read, I believe that I need to rebuild QEMU to get it to use my back-end driver, but if this is the correct approach, I don't understand what I need to edit when I rebuild.

 

A couple questions:
1. Is my current approach correct?

2. What do I need to do to get my front-end and back-end drivers communicating with each other?

 

Regards,

Chris