Linux virtualization and PCI passthrough

“Platform device emulation
Before we jump into passthrough, let’s explore how device emulation
works today in two hypervisor architectures. The first architecture
incorporates device emulation within the hypervisor, while the
second pushes device emulation to a hypervisor-external
application.

“Device emulation within the hypervisor is a common method
implemented within the VMware workstation product (an operating
system-based hypervisor). In this model, the hypervisor includes
emulations of common devices that the various guest operating
systems can share, including virtual disks, virtual network
adapters, and other necessary platform elements. This particular
model is shown in Figure 1.”

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