Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] VPMU fixes

[Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>]

On 12/03/2015 06:02 AM, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 03.12.15 at 11:46, <kevin.tian@intel.com> wrote:
>>>   From: Jan Beulich [mailto:JBeulich@suse.com]
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2015 6:36 PM
>>>
>>>>>> On 03.12.15 at 07:16, <kevin.tian@intel.com> wrote:
>>>>>   From: Dietmar Hahn [mailto:dietmar.hahn@ts.fujitsu.com]
>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:21 PM
>>>>>
>>>>> Am Mittwoch 02 Dezember 2015, 02:20:49 schrieb Tian, Kevin:
>>>>>>> From: Boris Ostrovsky [mailto:boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com]
>>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 12:50 AM
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Limit VPMU support to PMU versions 2, 3 and 4 (emulated at version 3
>> level)
>>>>>>> * Always implement family 6 VPMU quirk.
>>>>>>>    ==>  Intel folks: is the quirk needed for all family 6 processors or can
>> we
>>>>>>>                      limit it to certain models?
>>>>>> Let me confirm this information internally. btw could you provide a link
>>>>>> where you find out the original quirk information?
>>>>> http://old-list-archives.xenproject.org/xen-devel/2010-11/msg01157.html
>>>>> Dietmar.
>>>> Looks there's no formal errata recorded from original thread. Since the
>>>> patch sustains original behavior, I'm OK with this assumption.
>>> Except that the Link Dietmar provided makes it even more
>>> likely that this could be limited to certain models (since in that
>>> original patch version it covered just two). See also the vague
>>> statement in 75a92f551a ("Currently only a few Intel models
>>> have VPMU workaround turned on. It").
>> Well, I'm not sure about the whole history. If you look at Boris's
>> patch, the code already assumes quirk for all family 6 before his
>> change.
> That's why I was referring you to the older patch (also by him),
> which converted from a model specific workaround to a universal
> one.
>

These are two threads that are related to 75a92f551a:
http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2013-05/msg01054.html
and
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2013-03/msg00998.html

The latter describes the actual problem that lead us to believe that the 
set of models that the original quirk covered was not enough. There was 
a suggestion that adding 43 (or 45) would be sufficient but then Konrad 
(who originally reported this) started hitting other problems and in the 
end it seems like we ended up with 75a92f551a as being the safest 
approach since Intel could not definitively confirm right set of models.

-boris