docs: add vfio-user documentation

Add some basic documentation on vfio-user usage.

Signed-off-by: John Levon <john.levon@nutanix.com>
Reviewed-by: Cédric Le Goater <clg@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/20250625193012.2316242-19-john.levon@nutanix.com
Signed-off-by: Cédric Le Goater <clg@redhat.com>
This commit is contained in:
John Levon 2025-06-25 20:30:10 +01:00 committed by Cédric Le Goater
parent 1a0c32a9da
commit c688cc165b
2 changed files with 27 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -85,6 +85,7 @@ Emulated Devices
devices/can.rst devices/can.rst
devices/ccid.rst devices/ccid.rst
devices/cxl.rst devices/cxl.rst
devices/vfio-user.rst
devices/ivshmem.rst devices/ivshmem.rst
devices/ivshmem-flat.rst devices/ivshmem-flat.rst
devices/keyboard.rst devices/keyboard.rst

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@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
=========
vfio-user
=========
QEMU includes a ``vfio-user`` client. The ``vfio-user`` specification allows for
implementing (PCI) devices in userspace outside of QEMU; it is similar to
``vhost-user`` in this respect (see :doc:`vhost-user`), but can emulate arbitrary
PCI devices, not just ``virtio``. Whereas ``vfio`` is handled by the host
kernel, ``vfio-user``, while similar in implementation, is handled entirely in
userspace.
For example, SPDK includes a virtual PCI NVMe controller implementation; by
setting up a ``vfio-user`` UNIX socket between QEMU and SPDK, a VM can send NVMe
I/O to the SPDK process.
Presuming a suitable ``vfio-user`` server has opened a socket at
``/tmp/vfio-user.sock``, a device can be configured with for example:
.. code-block:: console
-device '{"driver": "vfio-user-pci","socket": {"path": "/tmp/vfio-user.sock", "type": "unix"}}'
See `libvfio-user <https://github.com/nutanix/libvfio-user/>`_ for further
information.