<div class='slidealt'>Virtualization solutions for heterogeneous <a title='ARMv7-ARMv8 virtualization open source solutions' href='/en/solutions'>ARM multicore systems</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Virtualization research projects <a title='ARM multicore kvm open source' href='/en/research'>in cloud and embedded systems</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>KVM on ARMv7 and ARMv8 <a title='kvm-on-arm open source smu extensions' href='/en/solutions/guides/vfio-on-arm/'>IOMMU full virtualization</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Benefit from custom <a title='kvm on arm services full virtualization' href='/en/services'>virtualization services</a></div> <div class='slidealt'>Experience kvm <a title='virtualization for embedded heterogeneous arm core platforms' href='/en/products'>virtualization extensions</a></div>

virtio-loopback: the open source virtio-based Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for Linux

The alpha release of virtio-loopback supports random number generator devices and is available on VOSYS' gitlab website

Virtual Open Systems has a long history of open source contributions in virtualization software

After the first virtio-loopback intermediate video demonstration published in July 2022, with this new video demo Virtual Open Systems provides an update of the virtio-loopback developments with an important news: the code of the alpha release is publicly available on the company Gitlab repository! More in details, virtio-loopback is a virtio based hardware abstraction layer that provides user-space applications with the ability to take advantage of user-space drivers using the standard virtio kernel interface. Virtual Open Systems develops virtio-loopback on behalf of the Linux Foundation and in the context of the Virtualization Expert Group of the Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project.

The new components and features demonstrated in this latest video are summarized as:

  • An updated version of the virtio-loopback-transport driver
  • First implementation of the virtio-loopback-adapter
  • Support for RNG vhost-user devices both in C and Rust programming languages
  • Initial version of Rust vhost-user modified library
  • HW heterogeneity: executes on x86 and arm64 targets, and has been tested on the Renesas R-Car M3 (AGL needlefish)
virtio-loopback implements full virtio applications portability between native systems and hypervisors

With virtio-loopback, applications using user-space drivers can be executed transparently in virtualized or native environments

virtio-loopback is under active development, and in the Virtual Open Systems Gitlab repository you can find the current implementation together with documentation about how to reproduce the demonstration on your system. The next development steps are to support new devices (virtio-blk, virtio-input), make them work together concurrently, and introduce performance optimizations.

Virtio-Loopback Alpha Release By Vos For Linux Foundation Automotive Grade Linux (Agl) virtio-loopback alpha release, an open source virtio-based hardware abstraction layer to enable portable application-driver interactions on native and virtualized environments