Re: [PATCH 2/3] KVM: PPC: Add SPR emulation exits

[Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>]

On 10/07/2012 01:41 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:
> SPRs on PowerPC are the equivalent to MSRs on x86. They usually
> control behavior inside a core, so the best place to emulate them
> traditionally has been the kernel side of kvm.
> 
> However, some SPRs should be emulated by user space. For example
> the DBCR0 register which is used for machine reset. Or the interrupt
> acknowledge register on e500 which is tightly integrated with the
> interrupt controller that lives in user space.
> 
> So let's expose "unknown" SPR reads and writes to user space, so that
> it can handle them if it knows what's going on.
> 
> As a nice side effect, we also get a lot better error reporting up
> to user space, since now we actually know when an SPR read/write failed.
> 

We have a similar problem with x86 MSRs.

> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
> index e726d76..7a35c64 100644
> --- a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt
> @@ -2253,6 +2253,32 @@ The possible hypercalls are defined in the Power Architecture Platform
>  Requirements (PAPR) document available from www.power.org (free
>  developer registration required to access it).
>  
> +		/* KVM_EXIT_SPR */
> +		struct {
> +			__u64 sprn;
> +			__u64 data;
> +			__u64 msr;
> +			__u8  is_write;
> +#define SPR_STATUS_OK   0
> +#define SPR_STATUS_FAIL 1
> +			__u8  status;
> +		} spr;
> +
> +This is used on PowerPC for Special Purpose Register emulation that
> +the kernel can not deal with.
> +
> +It occurs when the guest triggers an mtspr or mfspr instruction on
> +an SPR that is not handled by kvm's SPR emulation code. In these
> +cases, 'sprn' contains the SPR ID. That ID is target CPU specific.
> +'data' contains the value to write to the SPR when 'is_write'==1 (mtspr)
> +or is used as result buffer for 'is_write'==0 (mfspr). Status is used
> +to tell the kernel that an SPR read/write was successful. It is set to
> +SPR_STATUS_OK by default. If user space fails to emulate an SPR access,
> +it should set it to SPR_STATUS_FAIL, so that the kernel can inject
> +an exception into the guest context. The field 'msr' contains the MSR
> +register state at the point of time the SPR read/write occured. It can
> +be used by user space for permission checks.
> +

Since this happens in the middle of instruction emulation, the same
rules should apply.  Userspace must reenter kvm with the response to the
instruction, and can force an immediate exit by queueing an unmasked signal.


What happens when a future kvm starts emulating an SPR that was
previously emulated in userspace?


-- 
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