GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Summer of Code 2012 Tianocore

Optimize OVMF for Xen HVM domains

by Bei Guan for Tianocore

Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF) is an implementation of Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and it contains a sample UEFI firmware for QEMU and KVM. We have also enabled Xen support in OVMF. This project is going to add Xen specific support in OVMF, such as PV (para-virtualization) front-end drivers, to improve boot and runtime performance. The PV drivers are to discourage the use of the emulated devices provided by Xen qemu-dm and make OVMF more Xen-aware. They will make OVMF boot on Xen quickly and gain high I/O performance.