XPCI(4) | Device Drivers Manual (xen) | XPCI(4) |
xpci
— Xen
frontend paravirtualized PCI pass-through driver
xpci* at xenbus?
pci* at xpci?
The xpci
driver is the frontend part of
the PCI pass-through functionality that can be used by Xen guest domains to
communicate with PCI devices.
From a guest point of view, xpci
is
similar to a pci(4) bus, except
that the guest talks with the PCI backend driver instead of the real
physical device directly.
When the host domain is NetBSD, the
xpci
driver is backed by a
pciback(4) driver within the
dom0.
The xpci
driver first appeared in
NetBSD 5.1.
The xpci
driver was written by
Manuel Bouyer
<bouyer@NetBSD.org>.
As PCI passthrough offers the possibility for guest domains to send arbitrary PCI commands to a physical device, this has direct impact on the overall stability and security of the system. For example, in case of erroneous or malicious commands, the device could overwrite physical memory portions, via DMA.
January 8, 2011 | NetBSD 10.99 |