VirtualBox KVM Backend Adds Support For SR-IOV Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VirtualBox KVM Backend Adds Support For SR-IOV Graphics

Announced one month ago by Cyberus Technology was an open-source KVM back-end for VirtualBox. This work by Cyberus allows for using the KVM hypervisor with VirtualBox as opposed to its custom kernel module maintained by Oracle. That KVM back-end has now been extended to support SR-IOV graphics virtualization...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/VirtualBox-KVM-SR-IOV-Support

[Danny3]

Wow, that's awesome!
Compared to Oracle which clearly doesn't give a fuck bout it!
But which vendor sells consumer GPUs with SR-IOV support?

[Chugworth]

A KVM back-end for VirtualBox actually sounds quite interesting. I haven't used VirtualBox in years and these days I mostly use KVM, which is fine for servers. But the Virtual Machine Manager doesn't give anywhere near desktop-like performance for GUI applications.

[ezst036]

Does this make [Windows] gaming inside of VirtualBox viable? Or is that where this is going, not there yet?

[Mitch]

Does this make [Windows] gaming inside of VirtualBox viable? Or is that where this is going, not there yet?

I'm interested in this as well. My only caution is that if the game in question thinks it's in a VM and cares (e.g. League of Legends, Maplestory), and they often try to look for VM evidence, your account on that game could be punished / banned.

[pabloski]

But which vendor sells consumer GPUs with SR-IOV support?

Intel! Since Alder Lake!!

[pabloski]

Does this make [Windows] gaming inside of VirtualBox viable? Or is that where this is going, not there yet?

SR-IOV is virtualization of GPU resources ( memory, registers, etc... ), so it is equivalent to the old GTV-G. It means the guest operating system sees a GPU only for itself. Obviously it will be physically multiplexed between the host and the various virtual machines using it. If you are a demanding game, the GPU couldn't have the necessary horsepower to run it.

[boelthorn]

Wow, that's awesome!
Compared to Oracle which clearly doesn't give a fuck bout it!
But which vendor sells consumer GPUs with SR-IOV support?

As pabloski wrote: Intel. You get this in every new Intel laptop for free. It just works, if you have the software bits.

Should be good enough for casual gaming, but obviously doesn't run AAA games at 4K. It's already nice to use this, if your usecase is actual work in a Windows VM, because it's so much more fluent.

[Quackdoc]

I can't help but wonder why? I mean im always for virtualization news, but virtualbox has been essentially dead and offers very little over qemu besides a gui and 3d acceleration, the latter which is currently a WIP with virgl to support opengl and d3d10, Vulkan is planned eventually which would pave the way for zink + d3d10 (potentially able to be expanded to d3d11 since 11 was more incremental improvements so it can be built on top of the d3d10 work) support which should beat out pretty much any VMM in terms of perf.

So I really have to question why not just try and help the virgl work, and make a gui for qemu?

[bug77]

Wow, that's awesome!
Compared to Oracle which clearly doesn't give a fuck bout it!
But which vendor sells consumer GPUs with SR-IOV support?

Of course they do, but they do in the Oracle way: every new goodie goes into the extension pack. Which is not free to install, but gated behind a license.