Re: [PATCH 2/3] Improve DEC handling

[Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>]

Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:22 AM, Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:
>   
>> We treated the DEC interrupt like an edge based one. This is not true for
>> Book3s. The DEC keeps firing until mtdec is issued again and thus clears
>> the interrupt line.
>>     
>
> That's not quite right. The decrementer keeps firing until the top bit
> is cleared, i.e. with mtdec. However, not *every* mtdec clears it.
>   

Right, that's we we fire a dec interrupt off whenever we mtdec with the
top bit set.

> (Also, I'm pretty sure this varies between Book 3S implementations,
> e.g. 970 behaves differently than POWERn. I don't remember specific
> values of <n> though, and I could be misremembering...)
>   

IIRC only the embedded cores were different. But I could be wrong. How
do I find out?

> So is this the failure mode?
> - a decrementer interrupt is delivered
> - guest does *not* issue mtdec to clear it (ppc64's lazy interrupt disabling?)
> - guest expects a second decrementer interrupt, but KVM doesn't deliver one
>
> In that case, it seems like the real fix would be something like this:
>
>  void kvmppc_emulate_dec(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
>  {
>  	unsigned long dec_nsec;
>
>  	pr_debug("mtDEC: %x\n", vcpu->arch.dec);
>  #ifdef CONFIG_PPC64
>  	/* POWER4+ triggers a dec interrupt if the value is < 0 */
>  	if (vcpu->arch.dec & 0x80000000) {
>  		hrtimer_try_to_cancel(&vcpu->arch.dec_timer);
>  		kvmppc_core_queue_dec(vcpu);
> +		/* keep queuing interrupts until guest clears high MSR bit */
> + 		hrtimer_start(&vcpu->arch.dec_timer, ktime_set(0, 100),
> + 			      HRTIMER_MODE_REL);
>   

This code path is only triggered when the guest mtdecs with a negative
value.

But I understand what you're trying to suggest and I think it's a bad
idea. We don't want to poll the guest for interrupt enablement.

On a real CPU the DEC interrupt keeps being active when the DEC register
is negative. And that's exactly what this patch implements, no? That way
we are automatically event-based and everyone's happy.

Alex