Re: [RFC 6/9] RISC-V: KVM: Add SBI PMU extension support

Atish Patra
2022-11-28T21:01:21Z

On Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 4:59 AM Anup Patel <apatel@ventanamicro.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 4:21 PM Andrew Jones <ajones@ventanamicro.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 02:18:26AM -0800, Atish Patra wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 5:58 AM Andrew Jones <ajones@ventanamicro.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 03:08:34PM -0800, Atish Patra wrote:
> > ...
> > > > > Currently, ARM64 enables pmu from user space using device control APIs
> > > > > on vcpu fd.
> > > > > Are you suggesting we should do something like that ?
> > > >
> > > > Yes. Although choosing which KVM API should be used could probably be
> > > > thought-out again. x86 uses VM ioctls.
> > > >
> > >
> > > How does it handle hetergenous systems in per VM ioctls ?
> >
> > I don't think it does, but neither does arm64. Afaik, the only way to run
> > KVM VMs on heterogeneous systems is to pin the VM to one set of the CPUs,
> > i.e. make sure the system it runs on is homogeneous.
> >
> > I agree we shouldn't paint ourselves into a homogeneous-only corner for
> > riscv, though, so if it's possible to use VCPU APIs, then I guess we
> > should. Although, one thing to keep in mind is that if the same ioctl
> > needs to be run on each VCPU, then, when we start building VMs with
> > hundreds of VCPUs, we'll see slow VM starts.
> >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > If PMU needs to have device control APIs (either via vcpu fd or its
> > > > > own), we can retrieve
> > > > > the hpmcounter width and count from there as well.
> > > >
> > > > Right. We need to decide how the VM/VCPU + PMU user interface should look.
> > > > A separate PMU device, like arm64 has, sounds good, but the ioctl
> > > > sequences for initialization may get more tricky.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Do we really need a per VM interface ? I was thinking we can just
> > > continue to use
> > > one reg interface for PMU as well. We probably need two of them.
> > >
> > > 1. To enable/disable SBI extension
> > > -- The probe function will depend on this
> > > 2. PMU specific get/set
> > > -- Number of hpmcounters
> > > -- hpmcounter width
> > > -- enable PMU
> >
> > ONE_REG is good for registers and virtual registers, which means the
> > number of hpmcounters and the hpmcounter width are probably good
> > candidates, but I'm not sure we should use it for enable/init types of
> > purposes.
>
> We are already using ONE_REG interface to enable/disable
> ISA extensions so we should follow the same pattern and have
> ONE_REG interface to enable/disable SBI extensions as well.
>

Thinking about it more, it may end up in vcpus with heterogeneous
capabilities (different SBI extension).
Most likely, it will be a bug and incorrect configuration from VMM but
it's a possibility.
For example: There will be two different scenarios for PMU extension

1. Boot vcpu disabled PMU extension - probably okay as guest queries
the PMU extension on boot cpu only.
The PMU extension won't be available for any other vcpu.

2. Boot vcpu has PMU extension enabled but others have it disabled.
The run time SBI PMU calls will
fail with EOPNOTSUPP and the user gets confused.

There will be similar cases for HSM extension as well.

As the entire extension won't be available to the guest if the SBI
extension is disabled for the boot cpu only.
There is also a slow VM start issue Andrew pointed about earlier.

This makes me think if a VM ioctl to disable/enable the SBI extension
for all vcpus makes more sense in this case.

> Regards,
> Anup

--
Regards,
Atish