Internships/ProjectIdeas/PCIe-PCI-Bridge

PCI Express to PCI bridge

Summary: Code an emulated PCIe-to-PCI bridge for QEMU PCI Express machines

Modern Virtual Machines and their devices are PCI Express, however a means of supporting existing PCI and PCI-X deployment is required. Some use cases may need using legacy PCI devices that plug into platforms that exclusively support PCI and PCI-X system slots.

QEMU already has a solution, the i82801b11 DMI-to-PCI Bridge Emulation. However, the device has some disadvantages: it cannot be used by ARM guests and it is part of the Root Complex, so it can't be hot-plugged.

The goal of this summer project is to code a generic PCIe-PCI bridge. The bridge should be hot-pluggable into PCI Express Root Ports and be usable across various architectures and Guest Operating Systems.

Once the bridge is merged upstream, the PCI/PCI Express infrastructure will be ported to the QOM model to conform with QEMU standards, all that as the time permits.

Links:

• http://qemu-project.org/Features/Q35
• http://qemu-project.org/images/4/4e/Q35.pdf
• http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob_plain;f=hw/pci-bridge/i82801b11.c
• http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/QOM
• http://qemu-project.org/images/f/f6/PCIvsPCIe.pdf

Details:

• Skill level: intermediate
• Language: C
• Mentor: marcel@redhat.com, marcel_a on IRC
• Suggested by: Marcel Apfelbaum <marcel@redhat.com>