Hypervisor Ports and Connections

When a guest sends a message or event to another guest, the message or event must be sent through a pre-allocated connection. A connection, in turn, must be associated with a destination port.

A guest calls the HvCreatePort hypercall function to create a port. The hypervisor allocates a port from the receiver's memory pool. In the HvCreatePort call, the guest passes a pointer to a HV_PORT_INFO structure that describes the port to create. The port specifies which virtual processor and SINTx to target. The caller can specify a range of valid event flags for an event port through a base flag number and flag count.

A guest calls the HvConnectPort hypercall function to create a connection to a previously created port. The hypervisor allocates connections from the sender's memory pool. When a connection is created, it must be associated with a valid port. This binding creates a simple, one-way communication channel. If a port is subsequently deleted, its connection becomes useless.

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Build date: 11/16/2013