Re: [PATCH v2 4/5] KVM: add KVM_USER_EXIT vcpu ioctl for userspace exit

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 16/08/2015 13:27, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 08/05/2015 07:33 PM, Radim KrÄmÃÅ wrote:
>> The guest can use KVM_USER_EXIT instead of a signal-based exiting to
>> userspace.  Availability depends on KVM_CAP_USER_EXIT.
>> Only x86 is implemented so far.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Radim KrÄmÃÅ <rkrcmar@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> ---
>>   v2:
>>    * use vcpu ioctl instead of vm one [4/5]
>>    * shrink kvm_user_exit from 64 to 32 bytes [4/5]
>>
>>   Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>   arch/x86/kvm/x86.c                | 24 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>   include/uapi/linux/kvm.h          |  7 +++++++
>>   virt/kvm/kvm_main.c               |  5 +++--
>>   4 files changed, 64 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
>> b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
>> index 3c714d43a717..c5844f0b8e7c 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
>> @@ -3020,6 +3020,36 @@ Returns: 0 on success, -1 on error
>>     Queues an SMI on the thread's vcpu.
>>   +
>> +4.97 KVM_USER_EXIT
>> +
>> +Capability: KVM_CAP_USER_EXIT
>> +Architectures: x86
>> +Type: vcpu ioctl
>> +Parameters: struct kvm_user_exit (in)
>> +Returns: 0 on success,
>> +         -EFAULT if the parameter couldn't be read,
>> +         -EINVAL if 'reserved' is not zeroed,
>> +
>> +struct kvm_user_exit {
>> +    __u8 reserved[32];
>> +};
>> +
>> +The ioctl is asynchronous to VCPU execution and can be issued from
>> all threads.
>> +format
> 
> This breaks an invariant of vcpu ioctls, and also forces a cacheline
> bounce when we fget() the vcpu fd.

KVM_USER_EXIT in practice should be so rare (at least with in-kernel
LAPIC) that I don't think this matters.  KVM_USER_EXIT is relatively
uninteresting, it only exists to provide an alternative to signals that
doesn't require expensive atomics on each and every KVM_RUN. :(

In addition, when you do it you have to transfer information anyway from
the signaling thread to the VCPU thread, which causes cacheline bounces
too.  For example in QEMU both the iothread mutex and
cpu->interrupt_request cachelines bounce.

> We should really try to avoid this.  One options is to have a
> KVM_VCPU_MAKE_EXITFD vcpu ioctl, which returns an eventfd that you then
> write into.  You can make as many exitfds as you like, one for each
> waking thread, so they never cause cacheline conflicts.

> Edit: I see the invariant was already broken.

Yeah, that was a long time ago.  This is when it became apparent in
kvm_vcpu_ioctl, but it was broken even before that for these 2-3
special asynchronous vcpu ioctls:

    commit 2122ff5eab8faec853e43f6de886e8dc8f31e317
    Author: Avi Kivity <avi@xxxxxxxxxx>
    Date:   Thu May 13 11:25:04 2010 +0300

    KVM: move vcpu locking to dispatcher for generic vcpu ioctls

    All vcpu ioctls need to be locked, so instead of locking each one
    specifically we lock at the generic dispatcher.

    This patch only updates generic ioctls and leaves arch specific
    ioctls alone.

    Signed-off-by: Avi Kivity <avi@xxxxxxxxxx>

Paolo
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