Re: [PATCH v2 00/18] arm64: KVM: add SPE profiling support

Andrew Murray
2019-12-24T12:56:55Z

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 12:22:10PM +0000, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Dec 2019 10:48:16 +0000,
> Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > [fixing email addresses]
> >
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > On 2019-12-20 14:30, Andrew Murray wrote:
> > > This series implements support for allowing KVM guests to use the Arm
> > > Statistical Profiling Extension (SPE).
> >
> > Thanks for this. In future, please Cc me and Will on email addresses
> > we can actually read.
> >
> > > It has been tested on a model to ensure that both host and guest can
> > > simultaneously use SPE with valid data. E.g.
> > >
> > > $ perf record -e arm_spe/ts_enable=1,pa_enable=1,pct_enable=1/ \
> > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null count=1000
> > > $ perf report --dump-raw-trace > spe_buf.txt
> > >
> > > As we save and restore the SPE context, the guest can access the SPE
> > > registers directly, thus in this version of the series we remove the
> > > trapping and emulation.
> > >
> > > In the previous series of this support, when KVM SPE isn't
> > > supported (e.g. via CONFIG_KVM_ARM_SPE) we were able to return a
> > > value of 0 to all reads of the SPE registers - as we can no longer
> > > do this there isn't a mechanism to prevent the guest from using
> > > SPE - thus I'm keen for feedback on the best way of resolving
> > > this.
> >
> > Surely there is a way to conditionally trap SPE registers, right? You
> > should still be able to do this if SPE is not configured for a given
> > guest (as we do for other feature such as PtrAuth).
> >
> > > It appears necessary to pin the entire guest memory in order to
> > > provide guest SPE access - otherwise it is possible for the guest
> > > to receive Stage-2 faults.
> >
> > Really? How can the guest receive a stage-2 fault? This doesn't fit
> > what I understand of the ARMv8 exception model. Or do you mean a SPE
> > interrupt describing a S2 fault?

Yes the latter.

> >
> > And this is not just pinning the memory either. You have to ensure that
> > all S2 page tables are created ahead of SPE being able to DMA to guest
> > memory. This may have some impacts on the THP code...
> >
> > I'll have a look at the actual series ASAP (but that's not very soon).
>
> I found some time to go through the series, and there is clearly a lot
> of work left to do:
>
> - There so nothing here to handle memory pinning whatsoever. If it
> works, it is only thanks to some side effect.
>
> - The missing trapping is deeply worrying. Given that this is an
> optional feature, you cannot just let the guest do whatever it wants
> in an uncontrolled manner.

Yes I'll add this.

>
> - The interrupt handling is busted. You mix concepts picked from both
> the PMU and the timer code, while the SPE device doesn't behave like
> any of these two (it is neither a fully emulated device, nor a
> device that is exclusively owned by a guest at any given time).
>
> I expect some level of discussion on the list including at least Will
> and myself before you respin this.

Thanks for the quick feedback.

Andrew Murray

>
> M.
>
> --
> Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.