Virtualizing high-performance graphics cards for driver design and development
Robert Geist, Zachary H. Jones, James M. Westall · 2009
Operating system virtualization tools such as VMWare, XEN, and Linux KVM export only minimally capable SVGA graphics adapters. This paper describes the design and implementation of a system that virtualizes high-performance graphics cards of arbitrary design to support the construction of authentic device drivers. Drivers written for the virtual cards can be used verbatim, without special function calls or kernel modifications, as drivers for real cards, should real cards of the same design exist. The applications of the system include both instruction in device driver design and allowing device driver design to proceed in parallel with new hardware development.