About VIRTIO

The VIRTIO standard aims to provide a standardized interface and device models for device para-virtualization in hypervisor environments.

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In recent years some hardware devices, like network controllers and NVMe based storage systems have evolved to be similar or compatible with the virtio protocol to allow hardware assisted I/O virtualization using para-virtualized device models.

VIRTIO Benefits

Virtio's 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 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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Many vendors of automotive grade hypervisors have already adopted virtio based devices into their system offerings due to the above mentioned reasons and the benefit of building upon these open source technologies has greatly improved the availability of commodity devices like network and block storage.

The Virtualized Platform

To allow further success of hypervisor environments in automotive it is essential that all vendors are able to provide compelling guest runtime environments that make the usual automotive I/O devices available. The essential devices could be defined and agreed upon by the industry.

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Additional efforts definitely need to be spent in the area of audio virtualization and the in virtualization of co-processors like DSPs, image processors and codec accelerators. Developing a standard model for the diverse buses found in cars like CAN or ethernet AVB could also be additional fields of investigation.

GENIVI and AGLs Role

(Opensynergy's proposal)

Vendor neutral industry bodies like GENVI and AGL can act a forum between hypervisor vendors, users and the hardware manufactures in a form that allows open collaboration in development and maintaining a standard platform definition.

The regular events can be used as occasions for interoperability testing and standard steering. The participation in the OASIS-VIRTIO committee can be delegated to such organization to voice the automotive industries concerns and advice in the technical committee.

GENIVI has in the past maintained domain specific APIs and standards can easily act as a body that makes sure the standard is not only maintained but also advanced as new technologies evolve.

AGL can provide the necessary collaboration with the upstream kernel project and the Linux Foundation which in-turn opens up for collaboration with the key industry players in cloud and enterprise computing.

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Virtual Device Categories

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: 

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