README.md: Add design for interrupt abstractions

Add a brief description of the design of the Interrupt abstractions.

Signed-off-by: Alexandru-Cezar Sardan <[email protected]>

README.md

@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ address range, IRQ number, etc)
 
 ## Design
 
+### I/O
+
 The virtual device model is built around four traits, `DevicePio` and
 `MutDevicePio` for
 [Programmed I/O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_input%E2%80%93output)
@@ -42,8 +44,40 @@ that there’s a virtual device registered on the bus for the requested address,
 and finally sends the request to that device.
 ![vm-device](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/241037/143853115-b1526028-6836-4845-a311-71cf989c60ef.png)
 
+### Interrupts
+
+Interrupt configuration is built around the `Interrupt` and `InterruptSourceGroup`
+traits. These traits allow device control code that is developed in separate
+crates from the VMM (which typically implements the interrupt mechanisms) to 
+configure interrupt delivery to the guest VM without having a dependency on the
+implementation of the interrupt mechanism.
+The `EdgeInterrupt` and `LevelInterrupt` are traits that provide interrupt
+assertion mechanisms and can be used by device implementations directly in order
+to inject interrupts in the guest VM.
+
+The `Interrupt` trait provides methods that are used by devices to enable and
+disable interrupt generation by registering the interrupt with the VMM. Access
+to additional interrupt properties is defined in new super-traits.
+`ConfigurableInterrupt` allows for devices to send or receive interrupt
+configuration parameters to/from the implementation inside the VMM. This is useful
+when devices need to specify custom data that the VMM will use when delivering the
+interrupt (e.g. MSI device id, PCI INTx pin etc).
+`MaskableInterrupt` is also defined as a super-trait for use with interrupts that
+can be masked/unmasked.
+
+An `InterruptSourceGroup` stores a collection of interrupts of the same type. It
+is the interface through which a device may request or release interrupts and
+perform group related actions like enabling or disabling all interrupts at once.
+Each device that generates interrupts can be assigned one or more
+`InterruptSourceGroup`s (depending on the types of interrupts it uses or logical
+grouping). The following diagram depicts the interaction between the components
+that use the interrupt interface:
+
+![vm-device-interrupts](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/86006646/148783015-fea49a7c-cff8-4ec7-8766-00b0baed41c5.png)
+
 ## Usage
 
+### I/O
 A device is usually attached to a particular bus and thus needs to implement a
 trait of only one type. For example, serial port on x86 is a PIO device, while
 VirtIO devices use MMIO. It’s also possible for a device to implement both. Once
@@ -67,6 +101,44 @@ address range to the device. The requests are dispatched by the client code, for
 example when handling VM exits, using `IoManager`'s methods `pio_read`,
 `pio_write`, `mmio_read` and `mmio_write`.
 
+### Interrupts
+
+To allow configuration of interrupts, a VMM must implement the `Interrupt` and
+`InterruptSourceGroup` traits for the interrupt mechanisms that the device
+requires. Implementation is machine or VMM specific and may depend on the types
+and number of IRQ chips that the machine has or interrupt delivery mechanisms
+(e.g. `EventFd`s).
+The device interrupt configuration code generally does not concern itself with
+the actual implementation of the interrupts and will be initialized with one or
+more `InterruptSourceGroup`s by the VMM.
+
+In order to allow devices to inject interrupt lines in the guest, a VMM must
+also implement either the `EdgeInterrupt` or `LevelInterrupt` traits, depending
+on the type of interrupt assertion mechanism that is supported. Devices use
+objects that have these traits to signal an interrupt to the guest.
+
+The device configuration code may define constraints for the types of interrupts
+that it needs by combining the supertraits defined into trait bounds (e.g. if it
+needs a `ConfigurableInterrupt` that can receive the `LegacyIrqConfig`
+configuration struct). MSI and legacy interrupt traits are added in this crate
+for ease of use. Configuration of these interrupt types are standardised.
+`MsiInterrupt` can also be used for MSI-X interrupts. These traits only define
+the configuration bounds for these interrupt types. `EdgeInterrupt` or
+`LevelInterrupt` will still need to be implemented in order to allow devices
+to use these interrupts. MSI interrupts are considered edge-triggered while
+`LegacyInterrupt` can be either edge-triggered (typically in the case of ISA
+interrupts) or level triggered (in the case of INTx interrupts).
+
+In order to have access to the underlying notification mechanisms used by the
+hypervisor, the device configuration may use the `AsRefTriggerNotifier` and the 
+`AsRefResampleNotifier` conversion traits and specify the `NotifierType` associated
+type. This type defines the interrupt delivery mechanism and is specific to the
+Hypervisor (e.g. KVM irqfd, Xen evtchn etc).
+
+One example of this requirement is the development of a VFIO device. Since VFIO
+can trigger a KVM irqfd directly, the VFIO device would need to get access to the
+underlying irqfd in order to register it with VFIO.
+
 ## Examples
 
 ### Implementing a simple log PIO device
@@ -119,3 +191,4 @@ This project is licensed under either of:
 
 - [Apache License](http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0), Version 2.0
 - [BSD-3-Clause License](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause)
+