linux/Documentation/virtual/kvm
Paul Mackerras ddf09f2a08 KVM: PPC: Book3S HV: Enable migration of decrementer register
[ Upstream commit 5855564c8a ]

This adds a register identifier for use with the one_reg interface
to allow the decrementer expiry time to be read and written by
userspace.  The decrementer expiry time is in guest timebase units
and is equal to the sum of the decrementer and the guest timebase.
(The expiry time is used rather than the decrementer value itself
because the expiry time is not constantly changing, though the
decrementer value is, while the guest vcpu is not running.)

Without this, a guest vcpu migrated to a new host will see its
decrementer set to some random value.  On POWER8 and earlier, the
decrementer is 32 bits wide and counts down at 512MHz, so the
guest vcpu will potentially see no decrementer interrupts for up
to about 4 seconds, which will lead to a stall.  With POWER9, the
decrementer is now 56 bits side, so the stall can be much longer
(up to 2.23 years) and more noticeable.

To help work around the problem in cases where userspace has not been
updated to migrate the decrementer expiry time, we now set the
default decrementer expiry at vcpu creation time to the current time
rather than the maximum possible value.  This should mean an
immediate decrementer interrupt when a migrated vcpu starts
running.  In cases where the decrementer is 32 bits wide and more
than 4 seconds elapse between the creation of the vcpu and when it
first runs, the decrementer would have wrapped around to positive
values and there may still be a stall - but this is no worse than
the current situation.  In the large-decrementer case, we are sure
to get an immediate decrementer interrupt (assuming the time from
vcpu creation to first run is less than 2.23 years) and we thus
avoid a very long stall.

Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <alexander.levin@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
History 2018-04-26 11:02:04 +02:00
..
arm arm/arm64: Add hyp-stub API documentation 2017-04-09 07:49:36 -07:00
devices KVM/ARM Changes for v4.14 2017-09-07 18:22:04 +02:00
00-INDEX KVM: Add halt polling documentation 2016-11-28 11:48:47 +11:00
api.txt KVM: PPC: Book3S HV: Enable migration of decrementer register 2018-04-26 11:02:04 +02:00
cpuid.txt KVM: x86: fix backward migration with async_PF 2018-03-11 16:23:23 +01:00
halt-polling.txt KVM: Add halt polling documentation 2016-11-28 11:48:47 +11:00
hypercalls.txt KVM: MIPS: Implement HYPCALL emulation 2017-03-28 14:53:33 +01:00
locking.txt kvm: x86: mmu: Update documentation for fast page fault mechanism 2017-01-09 14:46:12 +01:00
mmu.txt kvm: x86: mmu: allow A/D bits to be disabled in an mmu 2017-07-03 11:19:54 +02:00
msr.txt KVM: x86: fix backward migration with async_PF 2018-03-11 16:23:23 +01:00
nested-vmx.txt KVM: nVMX: Documentation 2011-07-12 13:15:22 +03:00
ppc-pv.txt Doc:kvm: Fix typo in Doc/virtual/kvm 2015-10-11 15:35:23 -06:00
review-checklist.txt docs: fix locations of several documents that got moved 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00
s390-diag.txt KVM: s390: add documentation for diag 501 2014-04-22 13:24:51 +02:00
timekeeping.txt KVM: doc: Fix typo in doc/virtual/kvm 2013-12-31 17:24:54 -02:00
vcpu-requests.rst KVM: Add documentation for VCPU requests 2017-06-04 16:53:00 +02:00