virtio(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

VIRTIO(4)               NetBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual              VIRTIO(4)


NAME

     virtio -- Para-virtualized I/O in a virtual machine


SYNOPSIS

   Virtio Over MMIO
     virtio* at acpi?
     virtio* at fdt?
     virtio* at pv?

   Virtio Over PCI Bus
     virtio* at pci? dev ? function ?

   Virtio devices
     ld* at virtio?
     vio9p* at virtio?
     viocon* at virtio?
     vioif* at virtio?
     viogpu* at virtio?
     viomb* at virtio?
     viornd* at virtio?
     vioscsi* at virtio?


DESCRIPTION

     The virtio driver implements the VirtIO interface for efficient, standard
     and extensible I/O between the hypervisor and the virtual machine.

     It supports VirtIO devices exposed over pci(4) or over the MMIO trans-
     port.

     The MMIO transport can be used, for example, in embedded systems and
     microVMs.  Devices may be discovered via acpi(4) or fdt, or specified
     through kernel command-line parameters using pv(4).

     The virtio driver provides the core infrastructure to communicate with
     the hypervisor and supports the following devices:

     ld(4)       A disk device.
     vio9p(4)    A 9P front-end device.
     viocon(4)   A console device.
     vioif(4)    An Ethernet device.
     viogpu(4)   A GPU device.
     viomb(4)    A pseudo-device to release memory back to the hypervisor.
     viornd(4)   An entropy source.
     vioscsi(4)  A SCSI adapter.


SEE ALSO

     acpi(4), ld(4), pci(4), pv(4), vio9p(4), viocon(4), viogpu(4), vioif(4),
     viomb(4), viornd(4), vioscsi(4)

     Rusty Russell, IBM Corporation, Virtio PCI Card Specification,
     http://ozlabs.org/~rusty/virtio-spec/.

     Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) Version 1.2, https://docs.oasis-
     open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.2/virtio-v1.2.html.


HISTORY

     The virtio driver first appeared in NetBSD 6.0.  Support for attachment
     via acpi(4) and via fdt was added in NetBSD 9.0.  Support for attachment
     via pv(4) was added in NetBSD 11.0.

NetBSD 11.99                    August 29, 2026                   NetBSD 11.99