diff options
author | Alok Kataria <akataria@vmware.com> | 2009-09-29 13:25:24 -0400 |
---|---|---|
committer | Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> | 2009-10-08 16:27:55 -0400 |
commit | d0153ca35d344d9b640dc305031b0703ba3f30f0 (patch) | |
tree | 969edf8a9d389abf5cded1af6dcf9334ddd235cf /Documentation | |
parent | f579bbcd9bb8b688df03191b92c56ab8af4d6322 (diff) |
x86, vmi: Mark VMI deprecated and schedule it for removal
Add text in feature-removal.txt indicating that VMI will be removed in
the 2.6.37 timeframe.
Signed-off-by: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
Acked-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
LKML-Reference: <1254193238.13456.48.camel@ank32.eng.vmware.com>
[ removed a bogus Kconfig change, marked (DEPRECATED) in Kconfig ]
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | 30 |
1 files changed, 30 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt index 89a47b5aff07..04e6c819b28a 100644 --- a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt +++ b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | |||
@@ -451,3 +451,33 @@ Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR | |||
451 | will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of | 451 | will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of |
452 | sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. | 452 | sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. |
453 | Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> | 453 | Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> |
454 | |||
455 | ---------------------------- | ||
456 | |||
457 | What: Support for VMware's guest paravirtuliazation technique [VMI] will be | ||
458 | dropped. | ||
459 | When: 2.6.37 or earlier. | ||
460 | Why: With the recent innovations in CPU hardware acceleration technologies | ||
461 | from Intel and AMD, VMware ran a few experiments to compare these | ||
462 | techniques to guest paravirtualization technique on VMware's platform. | ||
463 | These hardware assisted virtualization techniques have outperformed the | ||
464 | performance benefits provided by VMI in most of the workloads. VMware | ||
465 | expects that these hardware features will be ubiquitous in a couple of | ||
466 | years, as a result, VMware has started a phased retirement of this | ||
467 | feature from the hypervisor. We will be removing this feature from the | ||
468 | Kernel too. Right now we are targeting 2.6.37 but can retire earlier if | ||
469 | technical reasons (read opportunity to remove major chunk of pvops) | ||
470 | arise. | ||
471 | |||
472 | Please note that VMI has always been an optimization and non-VMI kernels | ||
473 | still work fine on VMware's platform. | ||
474 | Latest versions of VMware's product which support VMI are, | ||
475 | Workstation 7.0 and VSphere 4.0 on ESX side, future maintainence | ||
476 | releases for these products will continue supporting VMI. | ||
477 | |||
478 | For more details about VMI retirement take a look at this, | ||
479 | http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html | ||
480 | |||
481 | Who: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com> | ||
482 | |||
483 | ---------------------------- | ||