kvm.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [PATCH 0/4] User return notifiers / just-in-time MSR switching for KVM
@ 2009-09-16 12:45 Avi Kivity
  2009-09-16 12:45 ` [PATCH 1/4] core, x86: Add user return notifiers Avi Kivity
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 28+ messages in thread
From: Avi Kivity @ 2009-09-16 12:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ingo Molnar, Marcelo Tosatti; +Cc: kvm, linux-kernel

The various x86 syscall related MSRs (MSR_LSTAR and friends, EFER when SCE
needs to be updated) are fairly expensive to read or write.  Since different
operating systems can set different values for these MSRs, KVM needs to reload
them when switching to a different guest or to the host.

Switching on every guest entry/exit is too expensive, so KVM reloads on
guest preemption, which is a lot rarer.  Even so, preemption based reload
is suboptimal:

- if we're switching to a kernel thread and back, there's no need to reload
  the MSRs.  Examples of kernel threads we're likely to switch to are:

  - the idle task
  - a threaded interrupt handler
  - a kernel-mode virtio server (vhost-net)

- if we're switching to a guest running the same OS, the MSRs will have the
  same values and there's no need to reload them

- if the guest and host run the same OS, again the MSRs need not be reloaded.

This patchset implements just-in-time reloads to defer them to the last
possible instant.  When we do reload, we check whether the values have in
fact changed and reload conditionally.

For the just-in-time reloads the first patch implements "user return
notifiers", a callback invoked just before return to userspace.  This has
been written so that there is no code impact if KVM is not configured, and
no runtime impact if KVM is not running.

The patchset improves guest/idle/guest switches by about 2000 cycles.

Avi Kivity (4):
  core, x86: Add user return notifiers
  KVM: VMX: Move MSR_KERNEL_GS_BASE out of the vmx autoload msr area
  KVM: x86 shared msr infrastructure
  KVM: VMX: Use shared msr infrastructure

 arch/Kconfig                       |   10 +++
 arch/x86/Kconfig                   |    1 +
 arch/x86/include/asm/kvm_host.h    |    3 +
 arch/x86/include/asm/thread_info.h |    7 +-
 arch/x86/kernel/process.c          |    2 +
 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c           |    3 +
 arch/x86/kvm/Kconfig               |    1 +
 arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c                 |  142 +++++++++++++++--------------------
 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c                 |   79 ++++++++++++++++++++
 kernel/Makefile                    |    1 +
 10 files changed, 166 insertions(+), 83 deletions(-)


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 28+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2009-10-25 12:23 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 28+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2009-09-16 12:45 [PATCH 0/4] User return notifiers / just-in-time MSR switching for KVM Avi Kivity
2009-09-16 12:45 ` [PATCH 1/4] core, x86: Add user return notifiers Avi Kivity
2009-09-18 18:14   ` H. Peter Anvin
2009-09-19  6:40     ` [PATCH v2] " Avi Kivity
2009-09-22  9:25       ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22  9:37         ` Arjan van de Ven
2009-09-22  9:48           ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 14:32         ` Ingo Molnar
2009-09-22 14:45           ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 15:50             ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 17:08               ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 15:19           ` H. Peter Anvin
2009-10-01 15:21             ` Avi Kivity
2009-10-01 15:25               ` H. Peter Anvin
2009-10-01 15:30                 ` Avi Kivity
2009-10-01 18:33                   ` H. Peter Anvin
2009-09-22 16:50           ` Peter Zijlstra
2009-09-22 16:52             ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 16:55               ` Peter Zijlstra
2009-09-22 17:05                 ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-22 18:06           ` Peter Zijlstra
2009-09-19  6:40     ` [PATCH 1/4] " Avi Kivity
2009-09-16 12:45 ` [PATCH 2/4] KVM: VMX: Move MSR_KERNEL_GS_BASE out of the vmx autoload msr area Avi Kivity
2009-09-16 12:45 ` [PATCH 3/4] KVM: x86 shared msr infrastructure Avi Kivity
2009-09-16 21:21   ` Marcelo Tosatti
2009-09-16 21:24     ` Avi Kivity
2009-09-16 12:45 ` [PATCH 4/4] KVM: VMX: Use " Avi Kivity
2009-10-25 12:23 ` [PATCH 0/4] User return notifiers / just-in-time MSR switching for KVM Avi Kivity

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).