[PATCH v5 0/3] KVM: LAPIC: Rework lapic timer to behave more like real-hardware

From: Wanpeng Li
Date: Thu Oct 05 2017 - 10:22:29 EST


The issue is reported in xen community.

Anthony PERARD pointed out:

https://www.mail-archive.com/xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg117283.html#

| When developing PVH for OVMF, I've used the lapic timer. It turns out that the
| way it is used by OVMF did not work with Xen [1]. I tried to find out how
| real-hw behave, and write a XTF tests [2]. And this patch series tries to fix
| the behavior of the vlapic timer.
|
|
| The OVMF driver for the APIC timer initialize the timer like this:
| write to TMICT (initial counter)
| write to TMDCR (divide configuration)
| enable the timer (this may change timer mode from one-shot to periodic)
| It turns out that TMICT is set to 0 on the last step, but OVMF expect the timer
| to run.
|
| Here is some description of the APIC timer, base on observation as well as read
| of the Intel SDM. The description is also patch of patch description
| (reworded).
|
| Maybe a way of thinking how the APIC timer is evaluated, is to think of how
| hardward will do it. There is a counter TMCCT which always keeps counting down.
|
| Setting TMICT also set TMCCT, nothing else matter.
| Setting LVTT does not change anything right away.
| Setting TMDCR does not change much.
|
| Now TMCCT keeps counting down, by a value related to TMDCR.
| Once, TMCCT reach 0, it is only at this time that LVTT is taken into account.
| Is there an interrupt to deliver? Should the timer restart counting from the
| value in TMICT?
|
| In the Intel SDM, there is the word "disarm" of the timer used. I guess the
| easier way to disarm the APIC timer (when in periodic or one-shot) is to set
| TMICT to 0. But if we take TSC-Deadline mode out of the picture, there is
| nothing in the manual that say that the timer is disarm or stopped when
| changing timer mode (there is only two modes left, period and one-shot).
|
| As for the TSC-deadline timer mode, observation shown that changing to it (or
| from it) does reset and disarm both timers, so effectively TMICT and the
| tscdeadline are set to 0.
|
| [1] https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2016-12/msg00959.html
| [2] v1:
| https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2017-03/msg02533.html
| v2: look for "[XTF PATCH V2 0/3] Testing vlapic timer"

v4 -> v5:
* reflect the runtime divide/rate update for the remaining timer

v3 -> v4:
* don't need to start_apic_timer() when write LVTT

v2 -> v3:
* move the write 0 to APIC_TMICT logic to apic_update_lvtt()
* skip hrtimer_cancel() in apic_update_lvtt() when either from one-shot mode to
periodic or vice versa.

v1 -> v2:
* add cover-letter and collect recent lapic patches to one patchset

Wanpeng Li (3):
KVM: LAPIC: Fix lapic timer mode transition
KVM: LAPIC: Keep timer running when switching between one-shot and
periodic mode
KVM: LAPIC: Apply change to TDCR right away to the timer

arch/x86/include/asm/apicdef.h | 1 +
arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c | 51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------
2 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

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2.7.4