Why Xen doesn't work with the PS3

[dezza]

- Our path to x86 apps? (PCSX2, PCSX, ePSXe, Wine, etc.)

Introduction
The Xen® hypervisor, the powerful open source industry standard for virtualization, offers a powerful, efficient, and secure feature set for virtualization of x86, x86_64, IA64, PowerPC, and other CPU architectures. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems including Windows®, Linux®, Solaris®, and various versions of the BSD operating systems.

Why is Xen interesting for the PS3?
Because Xen can run x86 environment inside of the running PPC system which enables us to run several x86 programs or faster virtualization of Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7)

xen-ppc-devel #1
LiNK: http://www.mail-archive.com/xen-ppc-devel@lists.xensource.com/msg01860.html

Hi, all I'm wondering if XenPPC can work on Cell BE(As it includes a 970 compatiable Core),

Yes, it could work on Cell with not a whole lot of effort.

Some register remappings, IIC and IOMMU work and you'd get just about everything else for free.

and ...what about PS3? Is it possible?

PS3 already comes with Sony's Hypervisor, so unless you can get _it_ out of the way, it would take substantially more work and it would be similar to the noHV work that was done for G5s: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPPC/NoHV

Or anybody already working on it?

nope, but I know quite a bit about Cell and would be willing to help.

xen-ppc-devel #2
LiNK: http://www.mail-archive.com/xen-ppc-devel@lists.xensource.com/msg01861.html

I'm wondering if XenPPC can work on Cell BE(As it includes a 970 compatiable Core), and ...what about PS3? Is it possible? Or anybody already working on it?

Cell BE does support the same hypervisor extensions that the 970 does, so in theory it should be possible to port Xen to it. I wouldn't call its core "970 compatible" other than in the way all PowerPC cores are +/- "compatible".

PS3 has its own hypervisor which of course won't let user-supplied code run in hypervisor mode.

Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center

REFERENCES

• Official website: http://www.xen.org/
• Support: http://www.xen.org/support/
• HOWTOs: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HowTos
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen
• PowerPoint: http://www.power.org/devcon/07/Session_Downloads/PADC07_Cho_20070914_xen_cell.pdf]PADC07_Cho_20070914_xen_cell.pdf
• Wiki: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPPC
• Article on Xen: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid39_gci1176065,00.html
• Windows Server 2008 (Xen): http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Virtualizing_Windows_Server_2008_with_Xen
• Windows XP / Vista (Xen): http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Installing_and_Running_Windows_XP_or_Vista_as_a_Xen_HVM_domainU_Guest
• Windows 7 (Xen): http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/Installing_and_Running_Windows_7_as_a_Xen_HVM_domainU_Guest
• Windows (Xen): http://mediakey.dk/~cc/xen-howto-install-windows/

CONCLUSION
Xen cannot yet run on the PS3 although it would be very tempting to do it and get access to all those nice x86 apps, especially emulators like Wine, ePSXe, PCSX2, PCSX and more.. I hope that this document will help others who got the same idea as me.

Take care.

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