Re: [PATCH] KVM: x86: always exit on EOIs for interrupts listed in the IOAPIC redir table

Paolo Bonzini
2014-08-06T14:08:44Z

Il 06/08/2014 16:03, Zhang, Yang Z ha scritto:
> Paolo Bonzini wrote on 2014-07-31:
>> Probably, the guest is masking the interrupt in the redirection table in
>> the interrupt routine, i.e. while the interrupt is set in a LAPIC's ISR.
>> The simplest fix is to ignore the masking state, we would rather have
>> an unnecessary exit rather than a missed IRQ ACK and anyway IOAPIC
>> interrupts are not as performance-sensitive as for example MSIs.
>
> I feel this fixing may hurt performance in some cases. If the mask
> bit is set, this means the vector in this entry may be used by other
> devices(like a assigned device). But here you set it in eoi exit bitmap
> and this will cause vmexit on each EOI which should not happen.

Note that this *was* reported on an assigned device.

IOAPIC should not be a performance-sensitive path. High-performance
assigned devices should be using MSIs.

Paolo