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Virtio relies on a dma-like memory model meaning that all allocations are handled by the "driver" part of the device and the "device" implementation can directly access the allocated buffers for reading or writing. This enables a resource saving and fast operating mode. Metadata is transported using so called virt-queues that resemble ring-buffers. Depending of that on the architecture used, several different transport and device discovery modes are supported, : PCI for x86, mmio for ARM and channel-IO for s390. These transports are geared toward the most efficiently possible efficient implementation per CPU architecture and allow for efficient implementations depending on the environment.
In recent years some hardware devices, like network controllers and NVMe based storage systems have evolved to be similar or compatible with the virtio VIRTIO protocol, to allow hardware assisted I/O virtualization using para-virtualized device models.
VIRTIO Benefits
VirtioVIRTIO's main main benefit for the automotive industry lies in it's sheer existence and operating system support. The fact that standardized device models exists allows for multiple compatible implementations of both driver and server parts of the system. The ubiquity of virtio VIRTIO in cloud and enterprise virtualization makes drivers readily available in all major operating systems which keeps driver maintenance effort to a minimum.
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