summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/introduction.tex
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authormstsirkin <mstsirkin@0c8fb4dd-22a2-4bb5-bc14-6c75a5f43652>2013-11-25 12:27:11 +0000
committermstsirkin <mstsirkin@0c8fb4dd-22a2-4bb5-bc14-6c75a5f43652>2013-11-25 12:27:11 +0000
commit1902f4a790ee572debce3bac3799dc7192664150 (patch)
tree76ea75bb1d0852ac507f30be5ac47d09850032cb /introduction.tex
parent346e9088b293e66bc31651aba52b2f7ca745ecb3 (diff)
introduction.tex: import from text document
manually import introduction from main text. Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> git-svn-id: https://tools.oasis-open.org/version-control/svn/virtio@117 0c8fb4dd-22a2-4bb5-bc14-6c75a5f43652
Diffstat (limited to 'introduction.tex')
-rw-r--r--introduction.tex66
1 files changed, 51 insertions, 15 deletions
diff --git a/introduction.tex b/introduction.tex
index 0047af4..74454a2 100644
--- a/introduction.tex
+++ b/introduction.tex
@@ -1,30 +1,66 @@
\chapter{Introduction}
-\section{Terminology}
-
-The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in \hyperref[intro:rfc2119]{[RFC2119]}.
-
+This document describes the specifications of the “virtio” family of
+devices. These are devices are found in virtual environments, yet by
+design they are not all that different from physical devices, and this
+document treats them as such. This allows the guest to use standard
+drivers and discovery mechanisms.
+
+The purpose of virtio and this specification is that virtual
+environments and guests should have a straightforward, efficient,
+standard and extensible mechanism for virtual devices, rather
+than boutique per-environment or per-OS mechanisms.
+
+ Straightforward: Virtio devices use normal bus mechanisms of
+ interrupts and DMA which should be familiar to any device driver
+ author. There is no exotic page-flipping or COW mechanism: it's just
+ a normal device.
+\footnote{This lack of page-sharing implies that the implementation of the
+device (e.g. the hypervisor or host) needs full access to the
+guest memory. Communication with untrusted parties (i.e.
+inter-guest communication) requires copying.
+}
+
+ Efficient: Virtio devices consist of rings of descriptors
+ for input and output, which are neatly separated to avoid cache
+ effects from both guest and device writing to the same cache
+ lines.
+
+ Standard: Virtio makes no assumptions about the environment in which
+ it operates, beyond supporting the bus attaching the device. Virtio
+ devices are implemented over PCI and other buses, and earlier drafts
+ been implemented on other buses not included in this spec.
+\footnote{The Linux implementation further separates the PCI virtio code
+from the specific virtio drivers: these drivers are shared with
+the non-PCI implementations (currently lguest and S/390).
+}
+
+ Extensible: Virtio PCI devices contain feature bits which are
+ acknowledged by the guest operating system during device setup.
+ This allows forwards and backwards compatibility: the device
+ offers all the features it knows about, and the driver
+ acknowledges those it understands and wishes to use.
+
+\section{Terminology}\label{Terminology}
+
+The key words "must", "must not", "required", "shall", "shall
+not", "should", "should not", "recommended", "may", and
+"optional" are to be interpreted as
+described in \hyperref[intro:rfc2119]{[RFC2119]}. Note that for
+reasons of style, these words are not capitalized in this
+document.
\section{Normative References}
\begin{longtable}{l p{5in}}
\phantomsection\label{intro:rfc2119}\textbf{[RFC2119]} & S. Bradner, Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels, \newline\url{http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt}, March 1997\\
+ \phantomsection\label{intro:S390 PoP}\textbf{[S390 PoP]} & z/Architecture Principles of Operation, \newline IBM Publication SA22-7832\\
+ \phantomsection\label{intro:S390 Common I/O}\textbf{[S390 Common I/O]} & ESA/390 Common I/O-Device and Self-Description, \newline IBM Publication SA22-7204\\
\end{longtable}
\section{Non-Normative References}
-
-
-
\newpage
-\section{Section}
-
-
-\subsection{Second level heading}
-\subsubsection{Third level heading}
-\paragraph{Fourth level heading}
-\subparagraph{Fifth level heading}
-