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The key challenge for defining a shared virtual platform definition is to first identify the various device driver types such a platform must provide, and to evaluate if existing work so far (e.g. VIRTIO) covers what the automotive industry needs:
| (Virtual) Device | Explanation | Champion | Completeness / Applicability evaluation
| Comments and discussion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Block Storage | Flash/Disk/persistent storage | Kai | ||
| Network | Access to (shared) physical ethernet and guest-to-guest communication | Nikola | ||
| Console | Text terminal input | Gunnar |  WIP | Done initial browsing of the specification. Opinions still pending. |
| crypto | Access to cryptographic services (hardware accelerated) | Sang-bum | ||
| GPU | Graphics hardware | Matti/Dmitry | ||
| Input | Traditionally keyboard/mouse/etc - for automotive = expanded? | Matti | ||
| vsock | Communication between guest (VM) and host (hypervisor) | |||
| 9pfs | 9P = protocol to expose host (hypervisor) file systems to the guest. FS=filesystem. | Gunnar | Use-cases: ? Completeness: Protocol: Need in Embedded/Automotive: Applicability: |
Essentially used for "shared folder" capability between host & guest, as in desktop (or maybe some server) usage. Its applicability to embedded hypervisor usage, in which the "host" is not really being used by itself) seems questionable. What's the use-case? In VIRTIO spec: A PCI type device can indicate that it is going to use the 9P protocol. The specification also has 9P as a specific separate device type. Other than that, I found no further description of such a device type. The protocol is specified elsewhere and complemented by scattered information regarding the specific implementations (Xen, KVM, QEMU, ...) The protocol seems proven and supposedly OK for what it does. Possibly more security features needed, depending on use-case. VIRTIO however seems to defer the definition completely to "somewhere else"? At least a reference to a canonical specification would seem appropriate. Overall it is a minimalistic network file-system protocol. It seems apt for the task. Understandably, other network protocols like NFS, SMB/SAMBA etc. would have been too heavy. It feels a bit esoteric, and while "reinventing" is bad, in this simple case would not be the worst ever, if VIRTIO had defined something else. Flexibility and security features seem somewhat glossed over. There's basically only "fixed user" or "pass-through" for mapping ownership on files in guest/host. |
| vIOMMU | IOMMU coordinates of DMA devices' | Dmitry | ||
| Audio | Matti | |||
| Sensors | Automotive sensors: | Automotive sensors? Radar/LiDAR/? (or are they separate ECUs?) Standard embedded sensor (ambient light...) Some OS have requirements - eg. Android requires orientation sensor. | ||
| Media Acceleration (VPUP, IPU, CODEC) | Hardware support for codec/processing Abstraction of SoC specifics DSPs Tensor processors | VPU = "AI" CPU optimized for visual recognition | ||
| USB | Franz | |||
Other Serial devices? (Where does LIN, etc. fit in?) | ||||
| CAN | Franz | virtio-can: VIRTIO-based CAN driver | ||
| Ethernet (incl. AvB/TSN) | Nikola | |||
| Bluetooth | Sang-bum +OpenSynergy with BT experience | Is it possible? Needed? | ||
| Memory Balloon Device | Applicable? |
VIRTIO-defined devices
The VIRTIO 1.0 specification is organized a bit differently, and more generic than our detailed list above. Here is a much abbreviated table of contents for VIRTIO 1.0, just to give an overview on the most important parts. Consider, especially, the limited types of devices. All defined devices are under these categories only for the 1.0 version.
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