Re: [PATCH RFC] KVM: x86: tell guests if the exposed SMT topology is trustworthy

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Tue Nov 05 2019 - 18:56:27 EST


On 05/11/19 17:17, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
> There is also one additional piece of the information missing. A VM can be
> sharing physical cores with other VMs (or other userspace tasks on the
> host) so does KVM_FEATURE_TRUSTWORTHY_SMT imply that it's not the case or
> not? It is unclear if this changes anything and can probably be left out
> of scope (just don't do that).
>
> Similar to the already existent 'NoNonArchitecturalCoreSharing' Hyper-V
> enlightenment, the default value of KVM_HINTS_TRUSTWORTHY_SMT is set to
> !cpu_smt_possible(). KVM userspace is thus supposed to pass it to guest's
> CPUIDs in case it is '1' (meaning no SMT on the host at all) or do some
> extra work (like CPU pinning and exposing the correct topology) before
> passing '1' to the guest.
>
> Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> Documentation/virt/kvm/cpuid.rst | 27 +++++++++++++++++++--------
> arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm_para.h | 2 ++
> arch/x86/kvm/cpuid.c | 7 ++++++-
> 3 files changed, 27 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/virt/kvm/cpuid.rst b/Documentation/virt/kvm/cpuid.rst
> index 01b081f6e7ea..64b94103fc90 100644
> --- a/Documentation/virt/kvm/cpuid.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/virt/kvm/cpuid.rst
> @@ -86,6 +86,10 @@ KVM_FEATURE_PV_SCHED_YIELD 13 guest checks this feature bit
> before using paravirtualized
> sched yield.
>
> +KVM_FEATURE_TRUSTWORTHY_SMT 14 set when host supports 'SMT
> + topology is trustworthy' hint
> + (KVM_HINTS_TRUSTWORTHY_SMT).
> +

Instead of defining a one-off bit, can we make:

ecx = the set of known "hints" (defaults to edx if zero)

edx = the set of hints that apply to the virtual machine

Paolo