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    vfio: VFIO core · cba3345c
    Alex Williamson authored
    
    
    VFIO is a secure user level driver for use with both virtual machines
    and user level drivers.  VFIO makes use of IOMMU groups to ensure the
    isolation of devices in use, allowing unprivileged user access.  It's
    intended that VFIO will replace KVM device assignment and UIO drivers
    (in cases where the target platform includes a sufficiently capable
    IOMMU).
    
    New in this version of VFIO is support for IOMMU groups managed
    through the IOMMU core as well as a rework of the API, removing the
    group merge interface.  We now go back to a model more similar to
    original VFIO with UIOMMU support where the file descriptor obtained
    from /dev/vfio/vfio allows access to the IOMMU, but only after a
    group is added, avoiding the previous privilege issues with this type
    of model.  IOMMU support is also now fully modular as IOMMUs have
    vastly different interface requirements on different platforms.  VFIO
    users are able to query and initialize the IOMMU model of their
    choice.
    
    Please see the follow-on Documentation commit for further description
    and usage example.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAlex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
    cba3345c