Re: [PATCHv4 6/8] x86/mm: Provide helpers for unaccepted memory

Dave Hansen
2022-04-08T19:21:20Z

On 4/5/22 16:43, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> +void accept_memory(phys_addr_t start, phys_addr_t end)
> +{
> + unsigned long *unaccepted_memory;
> + unsigned long flags;
> + unsigned int rs, re;
> +
> + if (!boot_params.unaccepted_memory)
> + return;
> +
> + unaccepted_memory = __va(boot_params.unaccepted_memory);
> + rs = start / PMD_SIZE;
> +
> + spin_lock_irqsave(&unaccepted_memory_lock, flags);
> + for_each_set_bitrange_from(rs, re, unaccepted_memory,
> + DIV_ROUND_UP(end, PMD_SIZE)) {
> + /* Platform-specific memory-acceptance call goes here */
> + panic("Cannot accept memory");
> + bitmap_clear(unaccepted_memory, rs, re - rs);
> + }
> + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&unaccepted_memory_lock, flags);
> +}

Just to reiterate: this is a global spinlock. It's disabling
interrupts. "Platform-specific memory-acceptance call" will soon become:

tdx_accept_memory(rs * PMD_SIZE, re * PMD_SIZE);

which is a page-by-page __tdx_module_call():

> + for (i = 0; i < (end - start) / PAGE_SIZE; i++) {
> + if (__tdx_module_call(TDACCEPTPAGE, start + i * PAGE_SIZE,
> + 0, 0, 0, NULL)) {
> + error("Cannot accept memory: page accept failed\n");
> + }
> + }

Each __tdx_module_call() involves a privilege transition that also
surely includes things like changing CR3. It can't be cheap. It also
is presumably touching the memory and probably flushing it out of the
CPU caches. It's also unbounded:

spin_lock_irqsave(&unaccepted_memory_lock, flags);
for (i = 0; i < (end - start) / PAGE_SIZE; i++)
// thousands? tens-of-thousands of cycles??
spin_lock_irqsave(&unaccepted_memory_lock, flags);

How far apart can end and start be? It's at *least* 2MB in the page
allocator, which is on the order of a millisecond. Are we sure there
aren't any callers that want to do this at a gigabyte granularity? That
would hold the global lock and disable interrupts on the order of a second.

Do we want to bound the time that the lock can be held? Or, should we
just let the lockup detectors tell us that we're being naughty?