Re: [Patch] KVM: x86/mmu: Make optimized __handle_changed_spte() for clear dirty log

Vipin Sharma
2023-01-26T00:40:47Z

On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 2:25 PM Ben Gardon <bgardon@google.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 2:00 PM David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 01:38:57PM -0800, Vipin Sharma wrote:
> > > @@ -736,7 +749,12 @@ static u64 __tdp_mmu_set_spte(struct kvm *kvm, int as_id, tdp_ptep_t sptep,
> > >
> > > old_spte = kvm_tdp_mmu_write_spte(sptep, old_spte, new_spte, level);
> > >
> > > - __handle_changed_spte(kvm, as_id, gfn, old_spte, new_spte, level, false);
> > > + if (record_dirty_log)
> > > + __handle_changed_spte(kvm, as_id, gfn, old_spte, new_spte,
> > > + level, false);
> > > + else
> > > + handle_changed_spte_clear_dirty_log(as_id, gfn, old_spte,
> > > + new_spte, level);
> >
> > I find it very non-intuitive to tie this behavior to !record_dirty_log,
> > even though it happens to work. It's also risky if any future calls are
> > added that pass record_dirty_log=false but change other bits in the
> > SPTE.
> >
> > I wonder if we could get the same effect by optimizing
> > __handle_changed_spte() to check for a cleared D-bit *first* and if
> > that's the only diff between the old and new SPTE, bail immediately
> > rather than doing all the other checks.
>
> I would also prefer that course. One big lesson I took when building
> the TDP MMU was the value of having all the changed PTE handling go
> through one function. That's not always the right choice but the
> Shadow MMU has a crazy spaghetti code of different functions which
> handle different parts of responding to a PTE change and it makes the
> code very hard to read. I agree this path is worth optimizing, but the
> more we can keep the code together, the better.

Let me see if I am able to get the same improvement in __handle_changed_spte().