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Common I/O devices for hypervisor guests with standardized features and interface, such that device drivdrivers (and thereby systems) are more portable.
Advantages:
- Device drivers (for paravirtualization) for the (Linux*) kernel don't need to be maintained uniquely for different hypervisors
- Ability to move hypervisor guests between different hypervisor environments
*virtio supported by BSD, Windows, Fuchsia, and others
Extending this: Standardizing a contract/standard between guest and hypervisor. Compare the OCI initiatives for containers. Container runtimes → can we have standardized "hypervisor runtime environment" that allows a standards compliant virtual (guest) machine to run.
- Hypervisors can fulfil the specification (with local optimizations / advantages)
- Similarly, this specification is what guests can be engineered to.
Compare: Linux Device Tree – ability to discover and configure devices.vi