[RFC 0/9] KVM-VFIO IRQ forward control

Eric Auger
2014-08-25T13:28:35Z

This RFC proposes an integration of "ARM: Forwarding physical
interrupts to a guest VM" (http://lwn.net/Articles/603514/) in
KVM.

It enables to transform a VFIO platform driver IRQ into a forwarded
IRQ. The direct benefit is that, for a level sensitive IRQ, a VM
switch can be avoided on guest virtual IRQ completion. Before this
patch, a maintenance IRQ was triggered on the virtual IRQ completion.

When the IRQ is forwarded, the VFIO platform driver does not need to
disable the IRQ anymore. Indeed when returning from the IRQ handler
the IRQ is not deactivated. Only its priority is lowered. This means
the same IRQ cannot hit before the guest completes the virtual IRQ
and the GIC automatically deactivates the corresponding physical IRQ.

Besides, the injection still is based on irqfd triggering. The only
impact on irqfd process is resamplefd is not called anymore on
virtual IRQ completion since this latter becomes "transparent".

The current integration is based on an extension of the KVM-VFIO
device, previously used by KVM to interact with VFIO groups. The
patch serie now enables KVM to directly interact with a VFIO
platform device. The VFIO external API was extended for that purpose.

Th KVM-VFIO device can get/put the vfio platform device, check its
integrity and type, get the IRQ number associated to an IRQ index.

The KVM-VFIO is extended with an architecture specific implementation.
IRQ forward control is implemented in the ARM specific part.

from a user point of view, the functionality is provided through new
KVM-VFIO device commands, KVM_DEV_VFIO_DEVICE_(DE)ASSIGN_IRQ
and the capability can be checked with KVM_HAS_DEVICE_ATTR.
Assignment can only be changed when the physical IRQ is not active.
It is the responsability of the user to do this check.

This patch serie has the following dependencies:
- "ARM: Forwarding physical interrupts to a guest VM"
(http://lwn.net/Articles/603514/) in
- [PATCH v2] irqfd for ARM
which itself depends on
- arm/arm64: KVM: Various VGIC cleanups and improvements
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-June/263685.html
- and obviously the VFIO platform driver serie:
[RFC PATCH v6 00/20] VFIO support for platform devices on ARM
https://www.mail-archive.com/kvm@vger.kernel.org/msg103247.html

Integrated pieces can be found at
git://git.linaro.org/people/eric.auger/linux.git
on branch 3.17rc1_forward_integ_v0

This was was tested on Calxeda Miday, assigning the xgmac main IRQ.

Eric Auger (9):
KVM: ARM: VGIC: fix multiple injection of level sensitive forwarded
IRQ
KVM: ARM: VGIC: add forwarded irq rbtree lock
VFIO: platform: handler tests whether the IRQ is forwarded
KVM: KVM-VFIO: update user API to program forwarded IRQ
VFIO: Extend external user API
KVM: KVM-VFIO: allow arch specific implementation
KVM: KVM-VFIO: add new VFIO external API hooks
KVM: KVM-VFIO: add kvm_vfio_arch_data and accessors
KVM: KVM_VFIO: ARM: implement irq forwarding control

Documentation/virtual/kvm/devices/vfio.txt | 25 ++
arch/arm/include/asm/kvm_host.h | 16 +
arch/arm/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h | 6 +
arch/arm/kvm/Makefile | 2 +-
arch/arm/kvm/kvm_vfio_arm.c | 599 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
drivers/vfio/platform/vfio_platform_irq.c | 7 +-
drivers/vfio/vfio.c | 35 ++
include/kvm/arm_vgic.h | 1 +
include/linux/kvm_host.h | 30 ++
include/linux/vfio.h | 4 +
include/uapi/linux/kvm.h | 3 +
virt/kvm/arm/vgic.c | 55 ++-
virt/kvm/vfio.c | 92 +++++
13 files changed, 862 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 arch/arm/kvm/kvm_vfio_arm.c

--
1.9.1