Re: [PATCH v4 0/6] virtio core DMA API conversion

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

On 09/11/2015 13:15, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> Well that's not exactly true. I think we would like to make
> it possible to put virtio devices behind an IOMMU on x86,
> but if this means existing guests break, then many people won't be able
> to use this option: having to find out which kernel version your guest
> is running is a significant burden.
> 
> So on the host side, we need to detect guests that
> don't program the IOMMU and make QEMU ignore it.
> I think we need to figure out a way to do this
> before we commit to the guest change.

What is the usecase for putting virtio devices behind an IOMMU, apart from:

1) "because you can"

2) using VFIO within the guest

?  Case 1 can be ignored, and in case 2 the guest will do the right thing.

> Additionally, IOMMU overhead is very high when running within the VM.
> So for uses such as VFIO, we'd like a way to make something like
> iommu-pt the default.

That's not something that the kernel cares about.  It's just a
configuration issue.

Paolo