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diff --git a/wiki/Project-Goals.md b/wiki/Project-Goals.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbce3e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/wiki/Project-Goals.md @@ -0,0 +1,106 @@ +# Project Goals + +> **Scope.** What Open-IOV is for, what it is not for, and the dated status of +> each goal. Condensed from +> [`../docs/01-orientation/01-purpose-and-scope.md`](../docs/01-orientation/01-purpose-and-scope.md) +> (mission, scope and success criteria) and +> [`../docs/README.md`](../docs/README.md) (the project front door); the docs +> tree wins on disagreement. The live milestone ladder is on +> [`Project-Status.md`](Project-Status.md), and the current execution detail on +> [`Execution-Frontier.md`](Execution-Frontier.md) and +> [`Graphics-Execution.md`](Graphics-Execution.md). + +Status: 2026-10-30, tree `master @ b4930168`. Tags: `[live]` working with the +stock guest driver; `[wip]` in progress; `[planned]` designed, not built; +`[target]` bring-up ahead; `[non-goal]` explicitly out of scope. + +## 1. Mission + +**Make NVIDIA GPUs fully virtualizable, by anyone, for any hypervisor, without +modifying NVIDIA software, firmware or hardware.** + +Concretely, Open-IOV builds an independent, maintained IP block that: + +* presents a virtual NVIDIA GPU to a guest operating system; +* lets the guest run the **stock NVIDIA driver** (Linux and Windows); +* supports **compute (CUDA)** first, then **3D graphics** and **video**; +* runs on ordinary NVIDIA GPUs already deployed in the field; +* isolates guests from each other and from the host; +* and requires no license key, no proprietary host service, no patched guest + driver, and no specific hypervisor. + +The guiding sentence is: ***Emulate the interface. Pass through the work. +Never patch anyone.*** + +## 2. The gap it fills + +| Approach | Limitation | +|---|---| +| Discrete device assignment (VFIO passthrough) | One GPU per VM; no sharing; fragile on consumer/laptop systems. | +| NVIDIA proprietary vGPU | Requires a license and a vendor host stack; driver-version locked. | +| Software GPU emulation (QEMU virtual GPUs, `virgl`) | No real CUDA; no real 3D performance; not usable for AI. | +| Cloud-only inference | Requires an external service; unacceptable for secure edge, offline, or private data. | + +Open-IOV occupies the gap: **real GPU acceleration, multiple VMs, stock +drivers, no license.** + +## 3. Goals and their status + +| Goal | What success looks like | Status (2026-10-30) | +|---|---|---| +| Stock guest driver initialisation | The unmodified driver probes, initialises and enumerates as on bare metal (`nvidia-smi`) | `[live]` — TU104 reference platform | +| Full CUDA driver-API surface | Context creation, allocation, copies, free, destroy complete with correct results | `[live]` — the driver-API smoke prints `ALL OK`; the 64-byte payload round-trips | +| CUDA kernel execution on real hardware | Verified guest kernels execute on the physical GPU, with engine-authored completions waking the guest | `[live]` — vector-add, matrix-multiply and transformer clients green on fresh boots; the staged-transfer class, the every-boot acceptance campaign and per-guest isolation are in progress ([`Execution-Frontier.md`](Execution-Frontier.md)) | +| OpenGL (3D graphics) | Stock guest GL applications render real pixels through the emulated vGPU | `[wip]` — Xorg/GLX run, the engine executes GL method streams (verbatim 3D replay + synthesized launches); rendered pixels are the frontier ([`OpenGL.md`](OpenGL.md)) | +| Vulkan | Stock guest Vulkan applications render real pixels | `[wip]` — the pipeline runs end to end (device → command buffer → fence → readback); frames are black — program delivery and program-VA mapping are the frontier ([`Vulkan.md`](Vulkan.md)) | +| Windows guests (DirectX, CUDA) | A stock WDDM driver and stock D3D/CUDA applications run in Windows guests | `[target]` — not started; same emulation target ([`DirectX.md`](DirectX.md)) | +| Video (NVENC/NVDEC) | Encode/decode through the emulated device | `[planned]` | +| Multi-tenant isolation | Multiple VMs on one GPU, isolated by the IOMMU and the device model, with explicit scheduling | `[wip]` — two mediated devices (different emulated VRAM sizes) and two guests coexist; per-guest execution isolation is in progress ([`GMMU-Multi-Tenant-Protection.md`](GMMU-Multi-Tenant-Protection.md)) | +| Hypervisor portability | The same IP block attaches to KVM, Xen, Argo/OpenXT, Qubes OS Air, ... | `[planned]` — the emulation core is hypervisor-independent by construction; KVM/QEMU with VFIO mdev is the reference transport ([`Hardware-Software-Matrix.md`](Hardware-Software-Matrix.md)) | +| Version and hardware portability | New driver, firmware or GPU generations enter by configuration plus measurement | `[wip]` — 570.144/TU104 is the anchor; per-version evidence workflows exist; newer versions are gated work | +| Live migration | A VM migrates with its GPU state | `[planned]` — the protocol analysis is kept for the record ([`Migration-Protocol.md`](Migration-Protocol.md)) | +| Performance | Within an agreed factor of native for the supported cases, with published methodology | `[planned]` — no published numbers yet; the first scheduled measurement is the 60 fps graphics target ([`Graphics-Execution.md`](Graphics-Execution.md)) | +| Security posture | Isolation survives adversarial review; the device fails closed | `[wip]` — fail-closed design and audit practice; per-tenant execution isolation is in progress ([`../docs/05-operations/01-performance-correctness-security.md`](../docs/05-operations/01-performance-correctness-security.md)) | + +## 4. How success is judged + +The project evaluates itself on five axes, each with a methodology document +in [`../docs/05-operations/01-performance-correctness-security.md`](../docs/05-operations/01-performance-correctness-security.md): + +1. **Initialization** — the driver reaches bare-metal parity through boot, + probe and initialisation. +2. **Runtime** — the guest runs real work: CUDA kernels with correct results, + OpenGL/Vulkan rendering, encode/decode; repeated, sustained, resilient. +3. **Interoperability** — no changes anywhere: guest driver, host driver, + firmware, hypervisor. +4. **Stability** — crash-free under stress: start/stop cycles, VM kill, driver + reload, suspend/resume, migration. +5. **Performance and security** — within an agreed factor of native, with + isolation that survives adversarial review. + +## 5. Non-goals + +* **Replacing bare-metal inference serving.** Continuous batching on + bare-metal hosts remains the right answer for centralised datacenter + inference; Open-IOV is for compute that must live *inside* guests. +* **Forking or patching** the NVIDIA driver (guest or host), the GPU firmware, + or hypervisors to make the device work. +* **Anti-cheat / DRM circumvention.** The project interoperates with + interfaces and implements **its own** device; it does not counterfeit + vendor licensing. +* **Emulating GPU instruction execution in software.** Software emulation of + CUDA kernels is orders of magnitude too slow; work must run on real silicon. + +## 6. Related pages + +* [`Project-Status.md`](Project-Status.md) — the dated milestone ladder. +* [`Execution-Frontier.md`](Execution-Frontier.md) — the compute execution + frontier. +* [`Graphics-Execution.md`](Graphics-Execution.md) — the 3D execution + frontier. +* [`HAAEEP-and-Collaboration.md`](HAAEEP-and-Collaboration.md) — the + agent-edge use case and collaboration models. +* [`Hardware-Software-Matrix.md`](Hardware-Software-Matrix.md) — the support + ladder. +* [`../docs/01-orientation/01-purpose-and-scope.md`](../docs/01-orientation/01-purpose-and-scope.md) — + the canonical purpose-and-scope document. |