Re: [PATCH] arm64: errata: Minimize tlb flush due to vttbr writes on AmpereOne

Oliver Upton
2024-02-07T09:46:14Z

On Wed, Feb 07, 2024 at 01:04:58AM -0800, Ganapatrao Kulkarni wrote:
> AmpereOne implementation is doing tlb flush when ever there is
> a write to vttbr_el2. As per KVM implementation, vttbr_el2 is updated
> with VM's S2-MMU while return to VM. This is not necessary when there
> is no VM context switch and a just return to same Guest.
>
> Adding a check to avoid the vttbr_el2 write if the same value
> already exist to prevent needless tlb flush.

Sorry, zero interest in taking what is really a uarch optimization.
The errata framework exists to allow the kernel achieve *correctness*
on a variety of hardware and is not a collection of party tricks for
optimizing any given implementation.

Think of the precedent this would establish. What would stop
implementers from, say, changing out our memcpy implementation into a
a hundred different uarch-specific routines. That isn't maintainable,
nor is it even testable as most folks don't have access to your
hardware.

Ignoring all of that -- I question the necessity of these patches
altogether. KVM writes to VTTBR at the time of vcpu load as of commit
934bf871f011 ("KVM: arm64: Load the stage-2 MMU context in
kvm_vcpu_load_vhe()"), which should drastically reduce the overhead of
this hardware fix.

--
Thanks,
Oliver