Will VirtIO-net PCI (1.0) device work with netkvm on WoA?

[PawelPajor]

Hi all,

I’m working on implementing a VirtIO-net PCI device for Arm’s Fast Models platform, in order to boot a Windows-on-Arm (WoA) image using the netkvm driver from this project.

We already have an MMIO-based VirtIO 1.0 device that works well with Linux. Now we’re planning a PCI version — still following the VirtIO 1.0 specification — and I’d like to de-risk compatibility with the Windows driver early on.

Could you clarify:

• Will a VirtIO-net PCI device, implementing only VirtIO 1.0 features, work correctly with the current netkvm driver on WoA?
• Or does the driver require any VirtIO 1.1+ features, such as VERSION_1, packed rings, or others?

Any guidance would be much appreciated — thanks for your work maintaining these drivers!

Best regards,
Pawel Pajor
Arm | Fast Models team

[YanVugenfirer]

Hi @PawelPajor ,

The driver should work with minimal feature set as well. The driver follows spec defined feature negotiation model with the device.
- this is a screenshot of device manager with NetKVM driver running on Windows 11 ARM64 of Apple silicon.

Best regards,
Yan.

[PawelPajor]

Thanks so much for the impressively fast and helpful reply — really appreciated!

Also, thank you for sharing the screenshot of the driver running on actual hardware. That’s a great confidence boost — it confirms that the netkvm driver works with a minimal feature set, negotiated according to the VirtIO spec, and doesn’t require 1.1+ features.

For context: I’m working on the VirtIO-net PCI device for Arm Fast Models, to enable booting Windows-on-Arm images with VirtIO support. Your answer gives us exactly the assurance we needed to proceed with a 1.0-compliant PCI implementation for our use case.

Thanks again for maintaining and supporting these drivers!

Best regards,
Pawel Pajor

[YanVugenfirer]

@PawelPajor No problem!

If you have some issues with the driver with your PCI device, please open issue here: https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows/issues