RE: [virtio-comment] RE: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for QingTian Box devices

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Jan 03 2022, "Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)"	<longpeng2@huawei.com> wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Cornelia Huck [mailto:cohuck@redhat.com]
>> Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 7:30 PM
>> To: Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)
>> <longpeng2@huawei.com>; Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
>> Cc: Gonglei (Arei) <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>;
>> virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>> Subject: Re: [virtio-comment] RE: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for
>> QingTian Box devices
>> 
>> On Mon, Dec 27 2021, "Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product
>> Dept.)"	<longpeng2@huawei.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: Michael S. Tsirkin [mailto:mst@redhat.com]
>> >> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2021 4:15 PM
>> >> To: Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure Service Product Dept.)
>> >> <longpeng2@huawei.com>
>> >> Cc: Gonglei (Arei) <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>;
>> >> virtio-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>> >> Subject: Re: [PATCH] content: reserve virtio device ID for QingTian Box devices
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 02:49:25PM +0000, Longpeng (Mike, Cloud Infrastructure
>> >> Service Product Dept.) wrote:
>> >> > Hi Michael,
>> >> >
>> >> > Is there anything else I need to do to reserve the device id?
>> >>
>> >> OK, I see the issue was created. I think it makes sense to wait
>> >> until Jan 3 with the vote since lots of people are on
>> >> vacation.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Ok, thanks.
>> >
>> >> Meanwhile - are there plans to add this device to the spec eventually?
>> >> Can you share a bit more of what it does?
>> >>
>> >
>> > We want to carve out some resources (e.g. vcpu, mem, pci_dev) from the user's
>> > VM and then use these resources to start a sandbox for the user. The usage
>> > quite likes the software enclave which Nitro already supported, but we have
>> > much wider usage, for example, running unikernel + app (e.g. OSV + Redis) in
>> > the sandbox, it would provide much better performance than the traditional
>> > os.
>> 
>> Sounds interesting. One question: Should this virtio device only support
>> a specific hypervisor, or could it support various hypervisors in
>> theory? (Via different commands or parameters.) In case of the latter,
>> it might be better to reserve an ID for a "sandbox device" or so. If the
>> design is too closely tied to your hypervisor, I'd be fine with
>> reserving the ID as proposed.
>
> We want to name the device as "virtio sandbox" originally, but consider that it
> would be much convenient to add new features (maybe tied to our hypervisor) in 
> the future if we introduce a private device, so we decide to use "QingTian Box" 
> at last.
>
> However, the sandbox function is not bound to a specific hypervisor, so it's free
> for the other guys to add something like "virtio sandbox".

Yes, I guess this is a tradeoff between "device for a closely defined
environment that can be specified/changed easily" and "generic device
covering different environments that gets very complex". I do not have a
very good grasp of the problem space; if it is hard to make generic, I
have no objection to the specific device id.

Anyone else have a comment? If not, we can go ahead and start a vote.