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Revision as of 16:47, 2 February 2009 by Rjones (talk | contribs)

SPICE protocol / QXL driver for guests

Add SPICE graphics protocol for guests

Summary

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 11
  • Last updated: 2009-02-30
  • Percentage of completion: XX%

Detailed Description

Current KVM-based virtual machines use an emulated Cirrus Logic graphics driver. This has numerous problems, the main ones being that it is slow and has a limited resolution. When Red Hat acquired Qumranet, we acquired a closed source protocol called SPICE which removes these limitations, is highly optimized, and supports such features as on-the-fly compression of video streams. The plan is to fully open source this and include all the pieces in QEMU/KVM, libvirt, Xorg, virt-install and virt-manager.

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora will benefit because guests will be able to use a graphics protocol which is much more suitable for virtual machines. They will be able to use higher resolutions and more colors, support 2D acceleration, and be able to display video streams. These are all things which are not possible with the current Cirrus Logic device emulation.

Scope

How To Test

User Experience

Users will notice faster guest consoles. They will be able to select high resolutions and color-depths than currently possible. Features such as video playback inside the guest will be possible.

Dependencies

Contingency Plan

None necessary, we will just continue to use the Cirrus Logic driver.

Documentation

Release Notes

Comments and Discussion